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.
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”.