Minister Parks Tau. As an EFF MP, I challenged Minister Parks Tau on South Africa's complicity in the suffering of Palestinians, demanding an end to coal exports that fuel genocide, writes Carl Niehaus.
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As an EFF Member of Parliament, I recently posed a direct, written parliamentary question to Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Mr Parks Tau. In the face of two unfolding horrors — the unprovoked criminal war unleashed by the United States of America and the State of Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran, in brazen violation of the United Nations Charter, and the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by apartheid Israel, with full American backing, against the Palestinian people in Gaza — I demanded clarity. That genocide has already been affirmed as plausible by the International Court of Justice in the historic case brought by South Africa.
My question was simple, yet urgent: does the Minister intend to take the next logical and moral step? Beyond the already long overdue severance of diplomatic ties with apartheid Israel, will the South African government immediately cut every trade, financial and economic link with the murderous Zionist regime?
I deliberately focused the question on the most glaring and indefensible aspect of our continued complicity: South Africa’s massive coal exports to apartheid Israel. These exports surged an obscene 87 per cent year-on-year to 474,000 metric tonnes in the three months to November 2025, with monthly values hitting around $28 million as recently as January 2025. This is not abstract commerce. This is blood coal. Every tonne powers Israel’s electricity grid, sustains its economy, fuels its war machine and keeps the lights on while Palestinian children are slaughtered in Gaza. I emphasised that this situation is untenable and represents a fundamental, hypocritical contradiction with our own ICJ case. I asked the Minister, in the strongest possible terms, to approach his colleagues and impose an immediate, formal ban on all coal exports to Israel.
When Minister Tau’s response arrived, I felt a profound sense of outrage — not merely personal, but deeply political and moral. His reply was nothing short of disgraceful, spineless and disturbing. Instead of demonstrating even a flicker of revolutionary principle or human rights commitment, the Minister retreated behind South Africa’s membership of the World Trade Organisation. He claimed, erroneously and shamelessly, that terminating coal exports would violate the WTO’s so-called principle of “non-discrimination” and expose our country to legal challenge. This is utter poppycock — a blatant lie wrapped in bureaucratic jargon. South Africa is a sovereign nation. We are not vassals of the WTO. We are not duty-bound to trade with war criminals, child killers and genocidaires. To pretend otherwise is to spit on the very international human rights culture that South Africa professes to uphold.
The Economic Freedom Fighters have long warned that the ANC-led Government of National Unity’s position on the Gaza genocide is grossly hypocritical. While the GNU rightly dragged apartheid Israel before the ICJ and secured a landmark ruling confirming plausible genocide, it continues to allow coal shipments that keep Israeli lights burning and Israeli bombs falling. This is not policy; it is betrayal. Minister Tau’s feeble assertion that a full coal boycott “cannot immediately be imposed” is not only false — it is an admission of moral surrender. Even more damning, he confessed that the government has not even conducted a study to determine whether these coal exports sustain Israel’s economy and electricity grid. Let me tell him plainly: they scandalously do. This coal is the oxygen of the genocide that Israel commits in Gaza.
The EFF has issued many media statements about the genocide in Gaza that capture the depth of our condemnation. We unreservedly denounce Minister Tau’s response as cowardly, spineless and morally bankrupt. We reject with contempt the weak, pliant and jellyfish-like posture of both the Minister and the entire ANC-led GNU. Their pathetic willingness to place profit before principle, to prioritise so-called WTO rules over the lives of Palestinian children, exposes them as spineless servants of global capital and Zionist interests. While the people of Gaza are being exterminated, this government continues to supply the very fuel that makes the massacre possible. History will record this as one of the most shameful chapters in South Africa’s post-apartheid foreign policy.
Our outrage is not abstract. It is rooted in the lived reality of the Palestinian struggle and in South Africa’s own history of fighting apartheid. The EFF has consistently maintained that the Israeli embassy in South Africa must be closed immediately. This demand was not a passing suggestion; it was an official EFF resolution, formally tabled in the National Assembly by our President and Commander-in-Chief, Julius Malema. That resolution further called for the complete severance of all trade, financial and economic relations with apartheid Israel. We will not rest until every single economic link is broken. Coal exports must be banned with immediate effect. No more delays. No more excuses. No more blood money flowing from South African mines into the coffers of a genocidal regime.
The hypocrisy of the ANC-led GNU is staggering. On the one hand, it postures as a champion of international law and human rights by taking Israel to the ICJ. On the other, it allows coal exports that directly sustain the very crimes it claims to oppose. This double standard is not accidental; it is the product of a government that has grown weak, captured by capitalist interests and increasingly detached from the revolutionary principles that once defined our liberation struggle. President Cyril Ramaphosa and his ministers, and his Zionist friends, hide behind a misconstrued concept of multilateralism when it suits them. When it suits him and his Zionist capitalist friends, they speak of sovereign power only when it is convenient, yet refuse to exercise it when the lives of defenceless Palestinians are at stake.
The EFF rejects this moral cowardice outright. We call on all progressive South Africans — the trade union movement, civil society organisations and every patriotic citizen — to join us in demanding an immediate and total boycott of apartheid Israel. We call on Minister Tau to reverse his cowardly position without delay. We call on President Ramaphosa to stop hiding behind multilateralism when it suits him and his Zionist capitalist friends, and to exercise the sovereign power of this Republic to impose a comprehensive ban on all coal exports to Israel. The absence of United Nations multilateral sanctions does not absolve us — it obliges us to act unilaterally in defence of humanity and also to support a full multilateral United Nations financial and economic boycott, including a comprehensive coal boycott against Zionist Israel.
As the EFF MP who posed this question, I am compelled to speak plainly. The people of Gaza are not statistics; they are our brothers and sisters in the global struggle against oppression. South African coal lighting the fires of their genocide is a stain on our national conscience that cannot be washed away by WTO technicalities or ministerial excuses. The EFF stands shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian people. We will continue to fight relentlessly until every economic tie with the Zionist entity is severed.
This moment demands moral clarity, not bureaucratic evasion. South Africa’s own struggle against apartheid taught us that silence in the face of injustice is complicity. The EFF will not be silent. We will not allow our government to sustain genocide with South African resources. The time for half-measures is over. The time for a total, uncompromising boycott of apartheid Israel — diplomatic, economic, financial and cultural — is now.
The Palestinian people are not alone. The EFF stands with them, today and always. We will not rest while South African coal lights the fires of genocide.
As an EFF MP, I challenged Minister Parks Tau on South Africa's complicity in the suffering of Palestinians, demanding an end to coal exports that fuel genocide, writes Carl Niehaus.
Image: Supplied
* Ambassador Carl Niehaus is an EFF Member of Parliament (MP).
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.