Embassy protesters are blind to the world around them

We see nothing wrong with the protest led by the SA Communist Party (SACP) outside the United States Embassy in Pretoria yesterday, condemning the assassination of Iranian strongman Qasem Soleimani.

The killing added to instability in the Middle East and has, possibly, made the world more insecure, so it is right for people in a country like South Africa – which professes neutrality in global affairs – to air their feelings.

What is unacceptable is that the protesters – including people from the other members of the tripartite alliance, the ANC and Cosatu – should have shouted “one American, one bullet” outside the embassy.

There will be plenty who explain that the old liberation slogan (appropriated by the ANC and its comrades from the Pan Africanist Congress, by the way) is only allegorical… but that is certainly not how it will appear to Americans, their media organisations and, critically, investors. No doubt the ANC will try to explain it away as freedom of speech and talk about the “contestation of ideas” within the alliance. But it cannot escape the inference that it approved of what was shouted.

One could also quite easily laugh off the whole protest – after all, only about 100 people pitched up to vent their “revolutionary” emotion – but it points to deeper areas of concern in SA’s political system.

The influence of the SACP is still considerable within the alliance and many of the ANC’s policies – like the National Health Insurance and expropriation without compensation – have some socialist underpinnings, as does the desire to have a Soviet-style command economy where the state controls financial activity.

The SACP – and many in the ANC – are still living in the past of the Cold War when their patron, the Soviet Union, loomed large.

Many have not noticed the world has changed.

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