Galloway Marches for Palestine in Cape Town
George Galloway joined thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators on Cape Town’s Sea Point promenade on October 3, bringing a familiar international anti-war figure into one of South Africa’s largest Palestine solidarity mobilizations of the weekend. Reuters photographed the former British MP at the march, while South African outlets reported that he and journalist Yvonne Ridley were in the country as part of their People Power Tour.
Galloway addressed the crowd by connecting the Palestinian struggle to South Africa’s own history of apartheid and resistance. SABC reported that he invoked Robben Island and Nelson Mandela while arguing that Palestinians face a system of confinement and dispossession. His appearance came after a South African tour that included Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, with events centered on Gaza, Palestine and opposition to Western support for Israel.
The Cape Town march also fits a wider African political pattern that Pamphlets has been following. At the UN General Assembly, fifteen African governments recently used their national addresses to back Palestinian statehood or condemn Israel’s conduct in Gaza, placing the continent’s Palestine solidarity politics inside a broader fight over sovereignty, colonialism and the international system.
Galloway’s involvement was not a sudden conversion to the issue. IOL reported that he has long presented himself as an anti-imperialist advocate for Palestine and that he worked with South African anti-apartheid activists during the ANC’s banned years. In Cape Town this week, he again framed Palestine through the language of colonialism and national liberation.
That history helps explain why his presence drew attention beyond the march itself. Supporters at Sea Point carried Palestinian flags and placards across the promenade, while Galloway and Ridley used their tour appearances to urge continued political pressure over Gaza. The event was organized with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and took place as South Africa continues its legal case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Galloway’s Cape Town appearance was consistent with a public position he has maintained for years: opposition to Israeli policy toward Palestinians and support for Palestinian national rights. In a city whose own history is inseparable from apartheid and anti-colonial struggle, the march placed that position inside a much wider South African tradition of Palestine solidarity.
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