Trump’s “peace” plan is apartheid, says South Africa’s president

On Tuesday I appeared on The Heat, on China’s CGTN television, to discuss the so-called Deal of the Century – the “peace” plan recently released by the Trump administration.

Kicking off the discussion, I cited South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, who slammed the plan at a meeting of the African Union, just before the body rejected it.

“It brought to mind the chronicled history that we as South Africans went through,” Ramaphosa said.

“The apartheid regime once imposed the bantustan system on the people of South Africa without consulting them and with all the oppressive elements which that plan had.”

Ramaphosa added that the Trump plan “sounds like a bantustan type of construct.”

Bantustans were a series of impoverished reservations where South Africa’s white supremacist government tried to force millions of Black people to live. The racist rulers hoped that the world would accept these reservations as “independent states,” and take pressure off the apartheid regime to grant full, equal rights to Black people.

Other participants in the program were Newsweek’s Jonathan Broder, Graeme Bannerman, a former analyst for the US State Department, and Matthew RJ Brodsky, a strong defender of the Trump plan.

Watch the video above.

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Israel HAS BEEN an apartheid state since 1948 with the implementation of its Basic Laws which LEGALLY disadvantage EVERYONE who is an Israeli citizen who is NOT JEWISH: "Apartheid Israel", Uri Davis

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Afrikaans National Party used Boer War concentration camps as an excuse for Apartheid. The anti-Semitic controversy's to be viewed in such light.

Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.