South Africa's coal exports to Israel spark protests

South Africans protested to demand that the government impose an embargo on all shipments of coal to Israel amid Tel Aviv’s genocide in Gaza.

Demonstrators on Thursday carried placards that read: “Glencore is fuelling genocide, No South African coal for Israel, Ban coal exports to genocidal Israel, Stop fuelling the genocide,’’

Mining company Glencore exports coal to Israel, which demonstrators said helps keep Israel’s electricity grid on, enabling its deadly high-tech military to function.

“We find it appalling that tonnes of coal exported from South Africa to the settler colonial regime fuels the regime's slaughter of Palestinians,” an official of the Johannesburg-based think tank, Media Review Network, told Anadolu.

‘Halt supply’

He urged South Africa to take a decisive measure to halt the supply by companies.

Protesters marched to the offices of the Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition in Pretoria, Durban, and Cape Town, to demand that the government stop coal mining companies from exporting to Israel.

The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) says the demonstration was to draw the attention of the government to the issue.

“As a country, which took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), we cannot again supply coal to Israel, which keeps its electricity grid on, supporting the industrial military complex it uses in carrying out the genocide,” an official of the union told Anadolu news agency.