About 1,000 protestors gathered outside the US consulate in Killarney, Johannesburg, in South Africa today, demanding that the US stop selling arms to Israel. This is ironic: SA's own state-owned Denel arms company also trades extensively with Israel...
This is however utterly ironic: the South African government's own state-owned Denel arms manufacturing company is a major supplier of military equipment to Israel, and the country also purchases massive quantities of military goods and know-how from the besieged middle-eastern country.
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'Palestine Solidarity Committee' protesters demonstrated - and punched a photographer of the Financial Mail in South Africa during the demonstration. Photographer Russell Roberts told the South African Press Association that a protester demanded to know what organisation he was from and, when he failed to answer, threw a punch at him, hitting his camera.
Chants of "Allahu Akhbar" and "Please free Palestine" were heard while the mostly muslim-crowd listened to speakers from the SA Council of Churches and the Congress of SA Trade Unions. Cosatu is one of the three parties which run South Africa in a tricameral coalition which is currently breaking up into two seperate political factions which are fighting each other tooth and nail.
The demonstrators had planned to throw shoes at a large picture of the current United States president George W Bush, but this did not go as planned. "Comrades had already torched his portrait by the time they got their shoes off," an organiser said.
Meanwhile in an unrelated incident, it has also become known that a South African woman and her two sons have been kidnapped by Yemeni tribesmen.
