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.
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.
