An African National Congress delegation arrived here Monday, marking the organization’s first official visit to Israel.
The trip is seen as the latest indication of a change in orientation for Israel, which traditionally has had strong ties to the white government in Pretoria. Now Jerusalem is trying to develop closer ties to the country’s black opposition, led by the ANC, with which it has had rocky relations in the past.
The ANC’s agreement to send the delegation was seen in Israel as a positive response to the new Israeli government’s overtures to the anti-apartheid movement.
The eight-member ANC delegation, drawn from the leadership of the ANC Youth League, will meet with Israeli President Chaim Herzog and other senior officials, visit agricultural projects and talk with African diplomats based in Israel as part of the 12-day trip.
The trip is the product of six months of talks between the ANC and the South African Union of Jewish Students, which organized the tour.
In Johannesburg, Howard Sackstein, a former president of the students union and leader of a group called Jews for Social Justice, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that those meetings revealed that the ANC had not had any “exposure to the Israeli perspective on the Middle East.”
South Africa’s chief rabbi, other Jewish leaders and Israeli officials gave the ANC delegation a warm send-off at a reception Sunday hosted by the Jewish students union.
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the community’s Zionist leadership have also endorsed the tour.
(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondent Suzanne Belling in Johannesburg.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
