South African Communist Party

SACP urges Orlando Pirates to reconsider its stance, withdraw from a pre-season friendly match with the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv, in solidarity with the dispossessed and oppressed Palestinian people

Tuesday, 11 July 2023

The South African Communist Party (SACP) urges Orlando Pirates Football Club to reconsider its stance, withdraw from playing Israeli’s Maccabi Tel Aviv in a pre-season friendly match, in solidarity with the people of Palestine who are under apartheid occupation and oppression by the Israeli regime. “On behalf of the SACP, I will ask for an urgent meeting with Orlando Pirates FC to discuss this important call”, said SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila.

In its statement responding to among others the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the blood-thirsty, murderous apartheid Israeli regime, Orlando Pirates asserts that heeding the call “would create a conflict within Orlando Pirates that would undermine the club’s values and history irreparably.”

In contradiction, it is insisting on playing the Israeli club that will irreparably undermine Orlando Pirates’ values and history, which the club forged as part of the principle adopted against the apartheid regime in South Africa, “There can be no normal sport in an abnormal society”.

It is indeed true, as Orlando Pirates indicates in its statement released on Monday, 10 July 2023, that the club “has its roots in a conflict-ridden South Africa and has been an active participant in the dismantling of apartheid”. To uphold this history, Orlando Pirates should still observe the fundamental principles adopted against apartheid South Africa.

Active expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people against their dispossession and apartheid conditions imposed upon them by the Israeli regime will be in line with the assertion in Orlando Pirates statement, that the club “is a socially conscious club that fully understands that it exists for the community and society.” The Palestinian people do not fall outside the global community and society – they deserve the solidarity that Orlando Pirates and other South Africans benefitted from against apartheid.

The agent that Orlando Pirates refers to in its statement, who has arranged the match, is throwing the club into a deep reputational crisis that could erode its historic legacy and make it difficult for the club to recover from the subsequent negative impact.

Agents cannot automatically be viewed to be neutral or immune from political influence by powerful forces on the global political and economic scene. The response by the club management threatens to roll back the Orlando Pirates value system.

Many people, ourselves included, hold high the banner Orlando Pirates. This is one reason the management must appreciate the concerns raised. 

Year in, year out, the apartheid Israeli regime attacks the Palestinian people, killing many, including children, and women. It will be un-Orlando Pirates to ignore this injustice and the fact that Israel is occupying dispossessed Palestinian territories.