PRESS REMINDER: Protest against USA Presidential State visit by Barack Obama to South Africa (Friday 28 June, Saturday 29 June)
 
1. Pretoria/Tshwane (Today, Friday 28 June)
National Protest against USA Presidential Visit by Barack Obama to South Africa
Today, starting at 10h00, the "No You Can’t Obama (NObama) Campaign" will hold a protest march against the United States of America (USA) Presidential visit by Barack Obama to South Africa. 
 
Date: Friday, 28 June 2013 (Today)
Time: 10h00 – 14h00
Venue: City of Pretoria/Tshwane
Starting: 10h00 at the Caledonian Sports Field (Corner Pretorius Street and Nelson Mandela Drive, Pretoria/Tshwane)
Route: From Nelson Mandela Drive at the Caledonian Sports Field, left onto Frances Baard Street, then left into Orient Streer then converging at the corner of Pretorius Road and Orient Street (directly in front of the USA Embassy)
Ending: Venning Park opposite from the USA Embassy (877 Pretorius Street, Arcadia, Pretoria/Tshwane).
Contact: 
Speakers: The confirmed speakers are Solly Mapaila (2nd Deputy General Secretary of the South African Communist Party), Buti Manamela (South African Member of Parliament and National Secretary of the Young Communist League), Reverend Boitumelo Senokoane (Reverend at the South African Council of Churches) and Ngoako Selamolela, the President of the South African Students Congress (SASCO).
 
NB: We are no longer starting the protest march from the Union Buildings. 
 
 
2. Soweto/Johannesburg (Tomorrow, Saturday 29 June)
Students from the University of Johannesburg Student Representative Council (UJ SRC), South African Students Congress (SASCO), Young Communist League (YCL) and others will be protesting tomorrow the University of Johannesburg's "poor and undemocratic" decision to host and confer an honorary doctorate to President Barack Obama. President Obama is schedule to give an American style "town hall" address at UJ's Soweto Campus tomorrow at 15h30.
 
Date: Saturday, 29 June 2013
Time: 09h00 - 16h00
Venue: University of Johannesburg, Soweto Campus, Old Potch Road/Chris Hani Road, Power Park, Soweto
Contact: 0729398384
 
 
ISSUED BY MBUYISENI NDLOZI
BDS SOUTH AFRICA CAMPAIGN'S OFFICER AND THE "NO/BAMA COALITION" NATIONAL COORDINATOR
FOR MORE INFO:
Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, 0731333012, mbuyiseni@gmail.com
Richard Mamabolo, 079-670-0274, mamabolor@gmail.com
Muhammed Desai, 0842119988 / mdesai@bdssouthafrica.com

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA (BDS SOUTH AFRICA)
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BDS South Africa is a registered Non-Profit Organization. NPO NUMBER: 084 306 NPO
BDS South Africa is a registered Public Benefit Organisation with Section 18A status. PBO NUMBER: 930 037 446
 
 
BACKGROUND TO PROTEST AGAINST THE USA PRESIDENTIAL VISIST BY BARACK OBAMA TO SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa's largest trade union confederation COSATU and its affiliates including NEHAWU, POPCRU, NUMSA and others, as well as the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), the Friends of Cuba Society (FOCUS), the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Young Communist League of South Africa (YCL), the South African Students Congress (SASCO), the South African Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the South Africa Lawyers Association (MLA) and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel in South Africa (BDS South Africa) reject the upcoming visit of Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America (USA), to our democratic country, South Africa.

Our rejection is based on the USA's arrogant, selfish and oppressive foreign policies, treatment of workers and international trade relations that are rooted in war mongering, neo-liberal super-exploitation, colonial racism and the disregard and destruction of the environment, thus making the realisation of a just and peaceful world impossible.

The coming of President Barack Obama to South Africa is the first ever since he was elected head of state. The USA under his leadership has escalated its assault on human rights, militarisation of international relations and continuing guzzling of world resources at the expense of the environment and oppressed peoples of the world.

The USA is deeply implicated in the oppression of the people of Western Sahara, the only remaining colonised country on the African continent, colonised by Morocco. And to this day, the release of the Cuban Five and a continuing baseless embargo against the country and peoples of Cuba still seems unmovable issues of commitment for the USA. The call for the release of the Cuban Five has been an important international campaign supported even by Nobel Prize winners who released a document calling on their freedom; Zhores Alferov (Nobel Prize for Physics, 2000), Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize, 1984), Nadine Gordimer (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1991), Rigoberta Menchú (Nobel Peace Prize, 1992), Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Nobel Peace Prize, 1980), Wole Soyinka (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1986), José Saramago (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1996), Günter Grass (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1999).

The criminal Israeli occupation of Palestine and Israel's apartheid policies, has only been made possible by the USA’s financial, military, diplomatic and political support for the racist Israeli regime (see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT8znVUaoKY). This is expressed primarily through the USA's open support and military donations to Israel that amount to billions of dollars every year (see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIWlpPyDE5Y) – with USA military aid to Israel being more than USA aid to Africa, Latin America and Asia combined. In addition, and on an international and diplomatic level, the USA has for years been single handedly blocking any progress and is totally divorced and isolated from the consensus of the international community with regard to Israel's illegal settlements, Palestine's UN Statehood bid and several other issues related to Palestine-Israel. In fact, the USA is the most frequent user of the UN veto: it has used its veto power over 40 times to defend Israel. As South Africans, we painfully recall how the USA supported and used its veto power to defend Apartheid South Africa (see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qu0dxerTDM), particularly from UN resolutions imposing economic and military sanctions. The USA, under President Regan and others, supported Apartheid South Africa and was on the wrong side of history. Why does the USA not learn from its history, and be on the right side of history, this time, by supporting the Palestinian struggle for liberation and specifically the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel campaign?

Finally, the USA's policies on the environment, specifically the fact that it is one of the largest contributors to global warming, yet to this day continues to refuse the observing and singing of the Kyoto protocol, is simply unacceptable.
    
Progressive forces in South Africa have consistently been raising these issues and many others regarding the role of the USA in the global community. We categorically make it known, that the visit of the USA President to South Africa is an un-welcomed visit that will be protested, picketed and resisted by all justice and peace-loving peoples of this country. Friendship with South Africa must be based on values of justice, freedom and equality and these the USA has offended, undermined and ridiculed through its actions in the global arena in general and in the third world in particular.
 
The following issues will be highlighted in upcoming South African protests against President Barack Obama:
 
1. The championing and maintenance by the USA in the militarisation of international relations. It is a well-known fact that the USA approaches conflicts in the world through inciting, encouraging as well and championing war, primarily driven by its business interests often masqueraded in the language of defense of human rights, for example in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The militarisation of international relations is, in the main, exemplified by institutions like Africom, NATO, and the continuing double standards around nuclear disarmament that the USA preaches when it comes to countries in the South, whilst holding one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world and continuing to collaborate on nuclear weaponry with the oppressive State of Israel.

2. The USA’s active support and defence of colonial and oppressive regimes. This is the one aspect of USA foreign policy that most exposes its hypocritical character where regimes that support its interest are never opposed; instead they are supported and maintained through, amongst other things, the USA's war machinery. Chief amongst these regimes is Israel, which continues to serve as the USA’s front-line state in the Middle-East, Israel is a country that no peace-loving country should support due to its racist apartheid policies against the Palestinian people. Another example, is the USA’s support to Morocco, that is oppressing and colonially occupying Western Sahara. And, increasingly the USA support of oppressive regimes in Latin America, like the one in Colombia.

3. The unjustifiable blockade on Cuba and unfair imprisonment of the Cuban 5.

4. The continued greed in the guzzling of world resources by the USA, epitomized by its encouragement and support of its multinational companies, like Walmart, that are anti-worker and have no regard for the environment, human rights, progressive labour laws etc.

5. The USA’s role in maintaining the underdevelopment of the African continent and its imperialistic trade relations with African countries.
 
6. The USA is the single largest contributor to global warming which is condemning the world into catastrophic environmental disasters.
 

THE NOBAMA! COALITION: UJ Student Representative Council (UJ SRC), UJ Palestine Solidarity Forum, COSATU and its affiliates including NEHAWU, POPCRU, NUMSA, CWU & others, World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), South African Communist Party (SACP), Young Communist League of South Africa (YCL), South African Students Congress (SASCO), Centre for Civil Society (CCS), Lawyers Association of South Africa (MLA), Muslim Students Association (MSA), Open Shuhada Street, Media Review Network (MRN), Friends of Cuba Society (FOCUS), Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA), PSC Cape Town (PSC CPT), Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel in South Africa (BDS South Africa) and over 20 other South African civil society organizations.