Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 17-11-2016
Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba has dodged questions about Israel being an apartheid state or whether Palestinians are an oppressed people but rather tenaciously expressed his concern about municipal issues, unemployment and rampant corruption facing the city.
Mashaba was speaking to Radio Islam about a newspaper article published over the weekend indicating that he was reconsidering Joburg’s links with Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Relations between one of South Africa’s largest cities and Palestine were forged between 2014 and 2015 under former African National Congress (ANC) mayor, Parks Tau.
Pushed to give his stance on the Palestinian issue, Mashaba says he will be criticized for making statements he doesn’t understand and doesn’t have control over.
“For me personally, in my personal capacity, over the years I’ve always believed in a two state position that the international community has committed in ensuring that we find a resolution in the Middle East.”
Mashaba has also denied he intends limiting the city’s relationships with the Palestinian city of Ramallah saying he first needs to deal with a number of crisis inherited from the previous government.
He says human rights organisations failed to engage him about his stance on the matter.
“Its really unfortunate that organisations that are supposed to be there to fight for the human rights of our fellow people in the Middle East and other parts of the world can be used to divide a South African nation along racial and religious basis.”
Mashaba says he has met with the Ramallah mayor Mousa Hadid and the Minister of Local Government, Dr Hussein Alaraj Mousa explaining his predicament of resolving local issues first.
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