By OBAKENG MAJE
15 June 2025- The African National Congress (ANC) said it has noted with contempt the recent disinformation peddled by an article that was published by Morocco World News, falsely claiming that South Africa has possible shifts on the Morocco’s so-called sovereignty over Western Sahara. The ANC said this is nothing more than a desperate fabrication by a monarchy bent on whitewashing its illegal occupation of Africa’s last colony.
The ANC national spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu said they should be unequivocal that South Africa’s revolutionary support for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and the Polisario Front is unwavering, principled and historically just. Bhengu said it is not a foreign policy of convenience.
“It is born of solidarity, forged in the trenches of liberation struggles from Algeria to Cuba, from Palestine to Namibia, and from Angola to South Africa. We reject with contempt the falsehood that Morocco trained President Nelson Mandela or uMkhonto weSizwe.
“These claims are an insult to the memory of Madiba and a distortion of history. Mandela was trained by the FLN of Algeria, a fraternal liberation movement that hosted ANC cadres through progressive internationalist solidarity, not through Moroccan imperial grace,” she said.
Bhengu further said the FLN had logistical presence in Morocco, but Morocco the state, as an institution, neither trained nor supported MK. She added that, no propagandist dare try to inherit their struggle retroactively.
“No revolutionary movement worth its name can cross the picket lines of dehumanising and opposing the struggles of the people of Western Sahara, Palestine or Cuba. Those who do so are collaborators in the erosion of our collective liberation memory and must be called out for what they are, agents of imperial convenience, not comrades of principle.
“The ANC reminds all who care to listen and all who pretend not to, that our support for the people of Western Sahara is not an emotional gesture, but a moral obligation and a duty of conscience,” said Bhengu.
She said the self-determination of the Sahrawi people is enshrined in international law, the Charter of the United Nations, and the founding principles of the African Union. Bhengu said Mandela said in 1997, that “The struggle of the Sahrawi people is our struggle. The last colony in Africa must be free.”
“We caution the African continent not to fall into the trap of transactional diplomacy that forgets the blood that continues to nourish the tree of our freedom. We urge vigilance against regime-change puppetry, misinformation campaigns, and the creeping legitimisation of colonialism in our lifetime.
“In this context, we express deep concern at the conduct of former President Jacob Zuma. For a man who once benefited from the same revolutionary internationalism that lifted the ANC, his flirtation with Morocco’s imperial narrative is more than disappointing, it is an act of political bankruptcy,” she said.
Bhengu said having once witnessed the dignity of the Sahrawi people and heard their cry for freedom, Zuma now chooses to lend his image to their oppressor. She said this not the conduct of a liberation veteran, it is the vanity of a man chasing relevance at the expense of revolutionary principle.
“This hypocrisy must be exposed for what it is; it is nothing but counter-revolutionary opportunism masked in fake diplomacy President OR Tambo reminded us: “We do not seek peace at the expense of justice. We do not barter principle for expediency”.
“This message serves to remind us that our struggle was never waged for selective justice but was waged to dismantle systems of oppression, wherever those exist. Hands off Western Sahara and long live the legacy of Madiba, Tambo and the anti-colonial front,” said Bhengu.
The Guardian 