Episode 45 - George Galloway: South Africa, War and the Changing Global Landscape

In conversation with George Galloway on South Africa, the anti-apartheid struggle, Nelson Mandela, international politics and the changing global landscape. Galloway reflects on his work with the ANC, the story behind Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday celebration at Wembley Stadium, and the role international solidarity played in South Africa’s liberation struggle.

*The views expressed in this conversation are those of the participants and are shared to encourage informed discussion and critical engagement.*

**** Don't Forget To Share And Subscribe****

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

When when when did you arrive? This is day two. Feels like day twenty two already. I've met thousands of people, uh, done multiple interviews. The first one was seven o'clock this morning. Uh, and uh getting ready for the full dress set piece uh performances at fundraising dinners, but uh it's generating spin-off uh meeting comrades from the old days uh and uh meeting new people, new generation. It's been marvelous. Yeah. Uh it's a long trip, three weeks. Uh so there's a long way to go, but so far I'm thoroughly enjoying it. And uh which cities will you be in? You mentioned Deborah. More or less them all. Uh we are in uh Durban next. Of course, we're in Cape Town, uh Pretoria public event. Um uh I think next Wednesday, 1100 tickets sold. Tickets are all sold out, so I don't need to punt them. Uh huh. Yes. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah. Um, so it's going to be action-packed. I'm hoping to renew acquaintance with some old comrades that I haven't met yet, Ronnie Castros in particular, uh, with whom I work very closely for many years. Um it's wonderful to be back in South Africa. I don't know if you quite know in South Africa how wonderful your country is. It's easy to uh in your own land be that prophet that isn't honored, but uh really you should honor the South Africa that you've made. It's really somewhere special. Thank you.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:48

I mean uh yeah thank you. I mean you have a very intimate history with uh the project, uh the democratic project. Um and we in the time we are in today um uh really do have an urgent retelling of the story of South Africa as a fundamentally um linked to the international project of human progress, human liberation in and of itself. But uh and that's where I want to start is if you could just say how the struggle with South Africa, how you came across uh the struggle with South Africa, how you participated in it, and what that meant um where you are from, whether it's was it in London or Scotland, but just that quick history uh as it were, it's important for South Africa where it is today, for South Africans to hear that they really have or owe this freedom that they attained also to the international progressive movement.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yes, uh I mean but your own resistance was the hammer, but we were the anvil. Uh and between that hammer and the anvil, apartheid was destroyed. Uh with the hammer without an anvil isn't much use, and an anvil without a hammer, of course, is not much use at all. Uh so for us it was located in the international struggle against imperialism, colonialism, of which this was one of the most egregious uh examples, but far from the only one. I mean, in those days, Zimbabwe was a prison state, a white supremacist state. Uh, Golan, Mozambique, and Namibia were occupied countries by foreign uh colonists. Uh, and uh it was part of an international movement that uh prior to my involvement here, my main involvement was the Vietnam War, but very different. Long before I had children of my own that look as if they could be Vietnamese, I used to look at the Vietnamese children uh under American bombardment and so on. Uh so Vietnam would be my first uh entry into the anti-imperialist struggle, though I come from an Irish background. So, of course, I was brought up, mother's milk and all that, on the role of the British Empire. So for us, this was a seamless garment. And it was only by chance that I learned just how special South Africa was and is, even now, with all disappointments that there have been, there have been, no point in pretending otherwise. Uh it was uh purely by chance. And that chance came when in 1983 I was appointed as the general secretary of an international aid agency. We worked closely with the ANC, uh, with the London cell, uh, and uh the magnetic, charismatic nature of the leadership of that London cell drew one in uh in a very special way. And then they asked me, uh, because I had the capacity to do it, I had the cover uh to do it, uh, to undertake some special responsibilities for the struggle. Uh I was delighted to do that. I did that successfully. I can't say exactly what I did because I don't know the statute of limitations. Uh definitely in Britain I don't know the statute of limitations, but I traveled the length and breadth of apartheid South Africa. I met some of the greatest characters I will ever meet. I was proud to do it. I regarded Nelson Mandela as my leader, Joe Slovo as my leader. I regarded uh the men in the bush as my Lord Stars. Uh and uh uh of all the things I've done, and because of a long life, I've done many things, uh, I have I'm more proud of the work I did here than uh anything else that I have done. I have uh one singular achievement that I can talk about, uh, which is I was the man that persuaded the ANC to hold Mandela's 70th birthday at Wembley rather than the Royal Albert Hall. And it was one of the toughest fights I ever had to fight. Uh it was uh crazy to me to restrict such an iconic event to the Royal Albert Hall capacity 4,000, when I was utterly convinced we could fill Wembley capacity, I won the argument, and the rest is history. So uh if you enjoyed the Wembley uh sellout uh occasion, you can thank me.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 7:17

The significance of the international consciousness, progressive internationalism to the average British citizen today. Uh how do you rate it today? I mean, uh after Brexit, it's it looks like the texture of citizen politics in the British uh uh society has turned its back against progressive internationalism. I mean, the you find a lot of people in your generation who say I was part of the anti-Vietnam protests, and then from there it's apartheid. And I think even in the in the early turn of the millennia, there would have been strong opposition, for instance, to the invasion of uh uh Iraq and all of that. But how is it like to be a progressive internationalist in a community that is predominantly and I'm I'm saying I'm reading Brexit as Britain turning its back against progressive internationalism?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Well, ask Ed Sheeran. Uh, you've heard of the Streisand effect, uh, where someone tries to suppress something and it makes it much bigger. Well, the Ed Sheeran effect is far, far greater. So in the last 72 hours, Ed Sheeran now looks like Judas Iscariot. His backup bands are now international superstars. They are rocketing up the Spotify charts, and people are demanding that they make a world tour. And they were only the warm-up acts for Sheeran. Sheeran destroyed his entire career by bowing to the Israel lobby in such a crude and vulgar and cowardly way. And Macklemore, a rap artist that I've never actually listened to. But makes the two of us. Yeah, I've never listened to him. And we've had to listen to him now. No, we'll have to listen to him. It will be obligatory. And I like Ted Sheeran, but I will never be able to play his music again. So uh the power of boycott and the few the the internet-fueled nature of that boycott, this is a very key point. Uh you're in independent media, so am I. Both of us are good at it, successful at it. Never underestimate it. If I tell you that the first boycott was in Dunn's supermarket in Dublin, where a single checkout girl refused to swipe two South African grapefruits. She was instantly dismissed. Her colleagues walked out on strike in her support. They were on strike for two years and nine months. The Mandela himself talked about how he learned of what they did in his prison cell. The Dunn's supermarket workers were the first blow in what became an absolutely global and iconic boycott movement without the internet, without mobile phones, without Twitter, without Facebook. Now Sheerin has been destroyed in an instant. Seventy-two hours. Because the uh means now exist for us to disseminate such news and uh raise such demands, uh, make such slogans, and now, and the creativity of people isn't just phenomenal. I mean, the backup bands are being encouraged to have a world tour called FLED Sheeran. Uh it in an instant we can now transform public consciousness in a way that in the 1980s simply didn't exist. So, no, I would say absolutely not, if you'll forgive me. The marches for Gaza in Britain have been the biggest marches, the most uh frequent marches for a long time in the emergency every week, and not just in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, everywhere in the country. So I would say millions of British people were mobilized in the course of the Gaza emergency. And of course, they were fueled by uh you can call it propaganda. I myself don't think there's anything wrong with the word propaganda. Uh the propaganda was the real experience of the people in Gaza, how they were living, how they were dying. All week you'd be looking at these videos on a Saturday. How could you not go to the demonstration? How would you feel about yourself if you chose to do something else instead? So, no, I'm proud of uh the British people's progressive internationalism. Sometimes it's incohate, sometimes it's confused, it's confused deliberately by the enemy. Uh so that, for example, the Syria question was uh a good example of confusion, something that had the form of revolution, but the content of total reaction, ISIS, al-Qaeda, etc. There were some people who were confused. Uh, and there are other uh issues too where that confusion exists, but where there is clarity and where there is unity, you can count on millions. And so these two shop girls uh in Dublin, not in Britain, uh they set something in motion amongst the people of our islands uh that is alive and kicking today.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 13:46

The interesting development uh steal uh in the last 72 hours is America's uh Secretary of State's announcement. I think it is the Secretary of State of a visa regime targeting the leaders in South Africa. Many people read that to mean uh is US's reaction to a sort of strong uh BRICS uh message on particularly Cyril Ramaposa's message on Palestine, uh on Iran and all of that. What do you make uh and I mean I will go into the Americans as well, the American ordinary citizens. But is the South African case would you agree that the South African case in the ICJ has invited a this type of aggressive diplomatic crisis for for the US?

SPEAKER_01 14:53

It's a punishment beating, it's a drive-by shooting. It's a drive-by shooting. You've just got to uh stand up to it, and I'm sure that you will. First of all, it's no loss not to go to the United States of America, frankly. Uh yeah, yeah. Many, many places better to go than that. Nelson Mandela was on the US State Department terror list until 2008. Yeah. Uh so we shouldn't confuse uh the rhetoric of the American Constitution, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and so on. They didn't mean you, they mean themselves, and only the white ones. The Constitution was written in part by slave owners. Uh so they were never with you. They were always against you, just like the British were always against you. Uh so don't be surprised by it, would be my first point. Don't uh spend time lamenting over it. There are far better places to go in the world than the United States. I don't think Trump has the strength to go much further than they've gone. I hope I'm not wrong, but I I think that Trump's days are very definitely numbered. Uh he will not survive the rest of his term, in my view, for one reason or another, but he will definitely be crippled in November by the midterm election results. So these are spasms uh from the Trump administration, and that's what they are punishment beatings, they are drive-by shootings, they are motivated by malice and spite, uh, and they're motivated by the peculiar and peculiarly close relationship that the United States has with the State of Israel. They've just signed now a new bomb deal to send 2,000-pound bombs on a scale not seen since the Second World War. Um now, whether you'll be able to get that through even is problematic. So um you should take pride, and I'm certainly proud of you, for the fact that this is a retaliation for the ICJ case. I'm a soldier of the ANC, whatever the disappointments, uh I will always be. And one of the things I'm most proud of is the court case that you took and the manner in which you took it. You spoke for the world uh and you you put into practice Mandela's words about your freedom being incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people, and it will never be forgotten, ever, ever, ever. And the great, great, great grandchildren of the people in Gaza now will always remember that it was South Africa who led the raising of that particular banner, naming what happened to them as a genocide, which it undoubtedly is. So uh the visa regulation, maybe there'll be some trade tariffs and so on uh to follow, but even his tariffs are being shot down by the Supreme Court with regularity now. Um and so it's you know, Gramsci's words uh remain extant that uh the new world is struggling to be born. The old world's time, but the new world is struggling to be born, and we live in the time of monsters. Well, they don't get much more monstrous than Donald J. Trump.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 18:55

The ordinary citizens of s of the United States, and I've seen huge demonstrations to the effect uh no king demonstration, very big. How would you raid the Palestinian solidarity movement on the ground in the US today?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Well, two words, Mayor Mamdani, uh the extraordinary achievement of Mamdani, uh in which a majority of Jews in New York voted for him, is perhaps the high watermark uh of uh uh the burgeoning solidarity movement in the United States, which I'll be frank, I never thought I would live to see it. Uh now in every demographic except Republicans over 65, Israel is in the minority column. In every demographic, class, race, age. Uh and uh it's a pity that a million Palestinians had to leave their guts on the ground in Gaza uh to make that change, but it's made. And it will never go back again. To quote uh Browning, there's no glad, confident mourning for Israel again anywhere in the world, and that's before the Ed Sheeran affair. Now, in all its nakedness and ugliness, we have seen how ruthless and brutal the Israel lobby in the United States is, and how unpopular the use of that brute force is amongst the people. So doesn't matter how many TV stations they buy, how many podcasters they subvert, how many people they bring on sweetheart tours, doesn't matter how much money they donate, they're finished. The word sponsored by APAC is now a major political liability in both parties in almost every part of the country. So uh it's all downhill for them from now on. And I thank the Lord I was here to see it.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 21:18

Yeah, coming back then to uh the Palestinian solidarity movement here in uh in South Africa, you you will be addressing what will be your importance, um uh I mean your message to an audience that is already uh part of a country in the international stage engaged in an ICJ case. You're right. What will be your message?

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah, you're right to make that point because I mean, talk about preaching to the choir. Uh you you don't have to work hard to persuade South Africans. Of the venality of the settler state, its formal relationship with the settler state here. The connections between the two struggles and the methodology of the opposition to these two settler states, they're so marked and similar. You don't have to work hard to persuade people of your case. And that's not true everywhere. So it's it for me, if you regard me as a professional in these matters, it's a walk in the park. So I have to step up the qualitative nature of the demands. Boycott is still an issue. I I met a lot of people yesterday, uh and I speak as a supporter of the ANC who are not happy at all about the coal, uh the supply of coal uh from South Africa to Israel, which is really quite high. Uh and of course, I know the arguments and the limitations, I know the economic uh facts and so on, but it doesn't sit right that a country that is taking another country to the international court, charging them with genocide, is also fueling, literally fueling through the coal exports. Uh so the quality of boycott is an issue. Uh and there are many people in South Africa who want that matter addressed. The renewing the internationalism that we talked about earlier in this interview is important also in regard to the unfortunate situation that you find yourselves in with the countries in your near abroad. Uh the issues of illegal immigration, undocumented workers, and so on. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware as the leader of the Workers' Party in Britain of the very real material uh problems caused by uh perception that everyone is descending on your country and it can only drive down wages, can only put pressure on services, and so on. But that has to be handled in a very careful way, lest it uh generate xenophobia and racism and ugliness, which can be violent, and so on. So uh reminding South African audiences of the international nature of their liberation uh is uh is important. I mean, I used to travel from here to frontline states, and I had a very close association with Cuba. Uh Fidel Castro was a friend of mine. Uh a lot of Cubans left their bones in the African dust uh for the liberation of this region, uh, and in one battle in particular, decisively so. Uh South Africa is not an island, uh, and no man is an island entire unto himself, and that's true of South Africa today as it was in the past. Uh reminding people that we're winning is important. Because whilst people are prepared to struggle and even fight, losing battles, because sometimes you have to do that, uh it's important that the people here know that we are winning. And if they didn't know it before the edge here in a pair of this, I mean no enough. Yes. Uh the world has decisively swung behind the Palestine question in a way that it decisively swung uh against apartheid South Africa. And it was late in the day when that happened. Uh I personally saw her lips move when Margaret Thatcher called Mandela a terrorist, a common terrorist, nothing but a common terrorist, she said. And they cheered. Oh, how they cheered. And I was there, I saw it. Now, well, even Thatcher herself had to welcome Mandela into uh Downing Street just a few years after she said that. Uh, it's important that people know struggles can be won. Yes. And that that which sometimes looks bleak can become bright very quickly indeed.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 27:00

Maybe the place where imperialism um is flexing yet another of its evil muscle. And everybody wonders uh what will be the the future or the immediate future outcome there is Iran. I wonder if you could uh lend us your own thoughts of what you think. There's uh people predicting that there is a possible ground invasion. Some of the most influential people have written in the Jerusalem Post and all of that, even devising a mechanism of how the United States should get the younger generation who is entrapped in debt to go fight on the ground in Iran by a debt forgivement strategy. What do you think is going to happen with that particular war in Iran? And what would be, uh, as it were, depending on how you see it, the implications on Israel and its actions in Gaza? The war is won.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Iran has won it. The neighbors all know it. They are, in some cases, privately, in some cases publicly, uh making new dispensations with Iran. They know that the United States cannot protect them, will not protect them, indeed, denuded them of protection. It had already sold them. Uh in the case of the frontline states in the Gulf, their interceptors were literally taken and shipped to Israel. Uh, even though uh the uh largesse of these family states uh towards the United States has been legendary. Uh I mean, even the Genovese family of the mafia in New York, if you pay them protection money, they usually do protect you. But these states have been paying protection money to the United States for generations, and when it came to it, the protection was literally withdrawn from them. So the role of the United States in the region will be very, very materially affected by what the last uh months now it's coming up to nine months actually uh uh has been. So uh the Iranians have emerged as a political, economic, military superpower. The BRICS now has two eyes, uh India and Iran, right in the middle of it. Uh there's a new confidence uh about Iran, its military confidence, but also its cultural confidence. The Iranians feel much better about themselves now. They feel taller. Uh they feel that their civilization, an ancient one, 5,600 years old, uh, has been vindicated. They feel that they taught the Americans a lesson, and they did. I believe, again, I hope I'm not uh wrong, but I believe there's no possibility whatsoever of American grand invasion. Trump doesn't have the political power and authority to do that, and the American GI is not interested. In fact, there's polling evidence that only two percent of the American personnel deployed in the Persian Gulf supports the uh mission, two percent. And sixty percent either strongly oppose it or merely oppose it. Sixty percent to two percent. And you saw the morale of the sailors on the Abraham Lincoln or Abraham Stinken, as we called it, when the toilets don't work, you're eating the product of the toilets in the kitchen. Uh uh it was a complete disaster. The whole deployment, the whole military effort has been a complete disaster. Sure, they killed a lot of people, uh, most of them schoolgirls and volleyball players, uh, girls. Uh it's a remarkable thing. Uh, their biggest military successes were the killing of significant numbers of girls in the Minab school and in the volleyball uh court uh in Tehran. Uh but the rest of their achievements could be written on the the back of my hand. Uh they have destroyed a bit of infrastructure, but only that infrastructure that didn't have a comparable target in America's allies in the Gulf. So they haven't destroyed Iran's oil infrastructure because they know that the very next hour, the oil infrastructure of the Persian Gulf allies of the United States would have been destroyed too. Even more interesting is the emboldenment of Ansar Allah, the people's army in Yemen. This is carried all before it. There has never been anything like this since 1940 when Hitler smashed through the Low Countries and deep into France. 5,000 square kilometers of Red Sea prime ocean front property was liberated by the Ansar Allah forces in a day. 5,000 square kilometers. And now Iran's ally controls not just uh the hinterland of Yemen, from which they could have shelled the Baba Mandab and did. They shelled a lot of uh Israeli boats and American boats, but now they control the entire coastline uh overnight. And of course, Iran has shown more and more that it controls the Strait of Hormuz. It will never be called the Strait of Donald Trump, uh, it will never be other than uh the coastal waters of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So this is quite a double whammy. You've now got not just one vital waterway, you've got two vital waterways. And so much so that Trump's emissaries had a secret meeting last weekend with the so-called Houthis. It's an insulting name. Uh it's like calling the South Africans Mandelas. Maybe they would like that, but uh Houthi is merely the name of the leader. Uh the answer Allah is their problem name. Uh and uh Trump met them at the weekend and made a deal with them. We'll leave you alone, you leave us alone. And the army was happy to agree to that, one enemy at a time, sort of thing. Uh so the position of Saudi Arabia is now extremely perilous. Not only have they lost the ability to ship their oil product out, ballistic missile, incredibly accurate ballistic missile fire, has knocked out the whole production capacity and pumping capacity, pipeline capacity of Saudi Arabia, so that this week, zero, zero Saudi barrels of oil were shipped. This is the first time this has ever happened since oil was discovered. Now, I'm not delighted at that. I don't want to see the wealth of the Arab people blown up and destroyed and infrastructure that cost a lot of money and took a lot of time. I don't want to see that. I want to see peace in the Gulf. But the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia's jacket is on a shaky nail, as we say in Scotland. Uh, because he led all of this. He started the war in Yemen, he put the mercenaries in there, he funded them, armed them, and now there's 30,000 princes in the House of Saud, at least one of whom must be thinking, this might be my moment, because the Crown Prince, MBS, has led us into a pretty sorry pass. And he doesn't come out of the uh Epstein files very well, to say the least. Uh put his body down the drain, reduced by acid. Uh he's not got a good name. There are many reasons to uh that you could adduce to a change of leadership in Saudi Arabia, and it might very well happen. And if it happens, it might happen soon. Equally, the Yemen experience has this is a counter historical uh notion, but it has shown the power of the tribes in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia is basically a tribal society in which the Al-Saud family stamped their own name literally and made a nation state, quite a divided one, but they wanted it to be a nation state. The Yemeni experience is that the tribes are where it's at. This is a tribal army. All of the different tribes have descended on the Red Sea coast, and if they keep going, they might waken up a nascent tribal feeling in Saudi Arabia that call into question, perhaps, the very existence of the state. So this is an existential challenge. The best, if I were advising MBS, uh, and I now so do through your excellent podcast, I would make peace as quickly as possible with the neighbors, including Iran. I'd kick the Israelis out of the doff, I'd tell the Americans that it was time for them to sling their hook, and that our security architecture will work out amongst ourselves. I'd advise MBS to do that very quickly indeed.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 38:20

Maybe we can end then with the fate of Israel's assault on the Palestinian people. It is truly, as many people have noted, a shame that humanity allowed Israel to come this far. What is your calculus of what how that gets to be disentangled? How do we get to stop Israel?

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Well, the first thing is that a surgeon uh cannot operate on his own foot. Uh someone else has to do that. The Israelis cannot reform themselves. Their polity is so degenerate, so racist, so supremacist, that Benjamin Netanyahu is the moderate in his cabinet. This is something not well understood. The problem is not Netanyahu, the problem is Israel and its population. I have many times been to Tel Aviv. I lived in Shrinken Street in Tel Aviv. Many of my friends were active in the popular movement that existed in the 70s and 80s. All of them have left. None of them are still in Israel. You will find them in New York, you'll find them in Lisbon, you'll find them in London, in Paris. They could not live in Israel any longer. So the number of progressives, if you like, uh still in Israel can be numbered in a very, very small number of thousands, three, four thousand people, probably tops. The rest of the population, whether they came from Russia or they came from the United States, and these are the two biggest components, or they came from Europe, are so thoroughly Zionized and so thoroughly convinced of their supremacy over the indigenous people that no progress can be expected from them whatsoever. So we have to be that surgeon that operates on the other surgeon from without. And that's where boycott divestment sanctions uh come in. It's where the South African legal case comes in. We have to so isolate the settler state that they leave. They will not change, they'll have to leave. Of course, some have an attachment to the land, but not many. It's not like South Africa, where six and a half million white people still live here. And many of them, most of them, actually love the place that they live. These farmers that uh Donald Trump invited to come to the United States, as I'm led to believe, they all came back. Yeah. Because they discovered they were nobody when they got to the United States. While they actually still did have privilege, far from a white genocide, they had privilege here. Uh it's not like that. Most of these people are two passport holders, and good lives await them in Paris, London, uh, Amsterdam, New York, and Moscow. I mean, I spend a lot of time, as you know, in Moscow. Israel has visa-pre access to Russia. There's a special relationship between Russia and Israel because there's well over a million Russian speakers in Israel. There's a lot of business between them. They could go back to Moscow like uh snapping their fingers and would have a good life there and a safe life there. There's no anti-Semitism in Moscow, none at all. Uh so why stay in a war zone when you made a bid to be a supremacist state and it failed? Why not go back to where you came from? And I think most of them will. Uh, those that stay, of course, have to be equal citizens uh under the law, and that works both ways. Uh, but not many will. And so I don't know if in my lifetime, but my youngest child, I have six kids. My youngest one is six years old. It's inconceivable to me that she will not live to see. I don't know what we'll call it. I've suggested calling it the Holy Land. But whatever it's called, a Palestinian state, from the river to the sea, my youngest kids will see that. I've never been more convinced of anything in my life. Uh, and it's our job to help that process uh by any means that we can. We're not asking people to go and fight. There's plenty of fighters. We're not asking people to ship arms to the resistance, they've got plenty of arms. Yes. Uh, all we're asking is to do what you can do within your powers, perfectly peacefully and legally. And if you do that, you'll be able to say, as I'm able to say now, I helped this place be free. Yeah. I risked, I gave my blood in the Google police station from my nose only, but I gave my blood quite a lot of blood. Uh I helped free South Africa. You'll be able to say, I helped free Palestine. Thank you so much, Mr. Gal. Great pleasure to meet you.