South African Rugby Union: Halt Apartheid Racist Rugby Tour!
3 February 2023
The South African BDS Coalition is outraged that the South African Rugby Union (SARU) has invited an apartheid Israeli rugby team, Tel Aviv Heat, to participate in the Currie Cup new Mzansi Challenge competition.
It is incredulous that a post-apartheid South African rugby organisation chooses to invite a team from a settler colonial state that continues to occupy Palestinian land, and uphold a brutal system of apartheid against Palestinians.
Palestinian and Israeli rights organisations, Al-Haq, and B’Tselem, in addition to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have published detailed reports concluding that Israel practises the crime against humanity of apartheid. Eminent South Africans such as Archbishop Tutu and Reverend Frank Chikane have stated that the Israeli regime is worse than the apartheid regime was in South Africa.
SARU claims it has transformed the rugby sporting code from the brutal and repressive days of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. It has exposed itself as having done no such thing by inviting a team from a racist apartheid state.