Tokyo Sexwale arrest: ANC demands US terrorist list apology Mr Sexwale
Mr Sexwale

Mr Sexwale

JOHANESBURG/WASHINGTON – South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) has demanded an apology from the Obama administration after senior party official Tokyo Sexwale was detained at the JFK international airport in the United States because he is on their terrorist watchlist.

A former housing minister, Sexwale is one of South Africa’s elite black business people and he is also a senior official with Fifa, football’s world governing body.

Sexwale, who has since returned to South Africa, was in the US on business. His lawyer, Leslie Makhabela, told the media that US immigration officials had “alleged he posed a threat to international security”.

Sexwale reportedly instructed Mkhabela to take up the matter with the US embassy in South Africa.

The ANC expressed outrage at Sexwale’s arrest and said his detention at the JFK international airport was “an affront to the global anti-apartheid movement”.

Both the ANC and the South African government have called on the US to remove from the terrorist watchlist those people who were put there for their role in the fight against white minority rule.

“This affront on the rights and dignity of Comrade Tokyo Sexwale necessitates an unconditional apology to him and the people of South Africa from the US administration,” said the ANC statement.

Witwatersrand University vice-chancellor and political analyst Adam Habib said it was unacceptable that the former housing minister is still considered a terrorist by the US and called on the South African government to intervene to have all the names removed.

Spokesman Keith Khoza said on Sunday night that while the ANC was not aware that the list still existed, South Africa would need to take up the matter “sharply” with President Barack Obama’s administration.

The spokesman for the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, Clayson Monyela, confirmed that Sexwale was arrested in the US, but said the detention was only for a few hours.

“What we heard is that the incident (arrest) happened last week and he was detained only for a few hours. We called our consulate in the US and they said they were aware. We haven’t been told why he was detained.”

“He is in the USA. He left some time last week. I am struggling to get hold of him,” Sexwale’s personal assistant, Eureka Smith said.

Khoza said the ANC was not aware of the arrest, but would immediately take up the matter.

“If the arrest has been as a result of his activities in the struggle against apartheid, I think it’s a matter that South Africa will need to raise sharply with the US because nobody can be arrested for matters that are purely South African in terms of the struggle against apartheid and the role people played in challenging apartheid,” said Khoza.

“What we know is that we have moved away from that. Everybody embraces the ANC and everybody accepts the struggle that was waged by the ANC. So we are not aware that they still have that list”.

A Department of International Relations and Co-operation official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media, said that arrangements were made recently to remove Sexwale from the US terror watch list.

“He has been on that US terror watch list for a long time. In fact, there were arrangements to remove him. Remember, in the past; people who received training from outside the country were put on that list. They were listed there and when the amnesty was granted, they were never removed,” said the source.

He added that Sexwale’s name was “unfortunately” not on the list that was circulated for clearance alongside that of former South African president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela. Sexwale was imprisoned alongside Mandela on Robben Island.

Mandela’s name was removed from the terror watch list after former US president George W. Bush signed a bill clearing him and other ANC leaders in 2008. Until then, they required a waiver from the US Secretary of State before visiting the US.

According to reports published on June 27, 2008, the removal of former President Mandela’s name from the terrorist watchlist by the US Congress was “a gift for his 90th birthday”, which he celebrated in London’s Hyde Park in support of his global HIV and Aids campaign.

The US Senate unanimously green-lighted the legislation on a voice vote late on removing the “terrorist” label and travel restrictions imposed on Mandela and other senior members of his African National Congress (ANC).

The House of Representatives passed similar legislation on May 8, 2008.

In an address to the Senate former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged for the removal, saying “It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts – the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela.”

“I really do hope that we can remove these restrictions on the ANC. This is a country with which we now have excellent relations – South Africa,” she said.

Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs who introduced the legislation in 2008 also argued that it was shameful that the United States still treated the ANC this way “based solely on its designation as a terrorist organisation by the old apartheid South African regime.”

The ANC was banned by the South African apartheid government in 1960, its leaders jailed or forced into exile until the ban on the movement was lifted 30 years later in 1990. – BBC-The Star-Xinhua-HR.

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