South Africans picket US Embassy in solidarity with Venezuela. Photo: Africa4Palestine
“Hands off Venezuela”, “Free Maduro”, “Kidnapped by the empire, free them now!”, read the placards, carried by hundreds in their march to the US embassy in South Africa’s capital Pretoria on Thursday, January 8. Participants in the solidarity action also waved the Venezuelan flag alongside red hammer-and-sickle flags.
Addressing this protest against the US bombing of Venezuela and the illegal abduction of its President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores on January 3, South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary, Solly Mapaila, condemned the US as a “rogue state”.
With a “moron” now in charge, he told the media, referring to its president, Donald Trump, “American imperialism” has shaped into “a new form of colonialism that is so unashamed, so naked”.
“The main destabilizer of world peace”
It is now “bullying everybody”, he said. Recalling that after attacking Venezuela, it has threatened military action against Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and even Greenland, and gone on to seize a Russian oil tanker to enforce the blockade on Venezuela, Mapaila insisted that the US is “the main destabilizer of world peace.”
Student leader Tariq Lala said in his address to the demonstration, “We stand here today to declare our very public support for the people of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and any peace-loving people threatened by the ‘fascist’ regime that sits in Washington.”
“Gangster state”
Condemning the “gangster state”, Muhammed Desai from the Anti-Fascist International (South Africa chapter) warned the US that it will be faced with “many more protests in the coming days and the coming weeks.”
The US is “not even mincing words around, they are saying clearly that they want to take Venezuela’s resources,” an activist from Africa4Palestine told Newzroom Afrika. Its military action without approval by the UN or even its own legislature is an “indication of much worse things to come,” he said.
Nevertheless, “we have seen worldwide that the ruling class is not willing to lift a finger. We have seen this in Gaza, and now we are seeing this in Venezuela,” he said, insisting that it is crucial “to start building workers’ organizations to resist these kinds of actions.”
“Yesterday it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Today it is Cuba, Venezuela. Tomorrow it could be any of us”
South Africa’s largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), was part of the coalition that organized and led this protest.
“This protest is not only about Venezuela; it is about defending international law, national sovereignty, and the right of people to determine their own future without bombs, sanctions, kidnappings, or foreign interference from the US,” read a joint statement by this coalition.
”Yesterday it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Today it is Cuba, Venezuela. Tomorrow it could be any of us,” it warned.
“It is high time” for other countries to sanction the US, said Khethiwe Mabaso, National Chairperson of the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS), several of whose leaders and activists are exiled in South Africa.
”Because if that country is not sanctioned, they will always have the power to invade any country,” she added in her address to the picket.
“The revolution and the revolutionary movement in Venezuela remain intact”
Maduro’s abduction is a major setback not only to the Bolivarian Revolution but also to left forces across Latin America, Mapaila said in his address to the demonstration.
Nevertheless, the SACP leader insisted, “the revolution and the revolutionary movement in Venezuela remain intact,” under the leadership of Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who is holding fort as the Acting President after the President’s abduction.
Other veterans of the Bolivarian Revolution, including the Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, remain in command, despite the 25 million dollar reward offered by the US for information helping its forces seize him.
Warning against falling prey to what Mapaila described as CIA propaganda, manufactured to “divide the liberation forces in Venezuela” with rumors of betrayal within the Bolivarian leadership, he called for unconditional solidarity with the movement and its leaders.
In solidarity with Cuba
Paying tribute to the Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers who fell in battle defending Maduro from one of the most elite special forces of the US, Mapaila went on to “thank the Cuban government for always standing up for socialism everywhere in the world.”
Describing its soldiers as “patriots who died in other lands, including our own land on the African continent,” he recollected they had fought “in Algeria, where they were defending the Algerian revolution, in Angola, where they were defending the Angolan Revolution, that led the liberation of South Africa, Namibia, and the rest of the” Southern African region.
With Trump now training his guns on Cuba and intensifying the decades-long effort to choke its economy with a blockade, “to Comrade Miguel, President of Cuba, we say stand firm. We remain with you,” Mapaila added.
