For a party that has portrayed itself as a moral force for peace and freedom, the ANC's inability to sympathise with the people of Israel for the brutal attack by Hamas again exposes the depravity of the governing party.
In a three-page carefully worded statement released by the ANC's spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, on Sunday, the party could not find the courage to condemn the brutal attack by a terrorist organisation of innocent civilians, including women and children.
Instead, the ANC immediately blamed the "apartheid state" Israel for the attacks on its citizens.
And in a thinly veiled justification for the horrific bombings by Hamas, the ANC victim blamed Israel by saying, "the decision by Palestinians to respond to the brutality of the settler Israeli apartheid regime is unsurprising".
In other words, Israel, you got what you deserved.
Not once in the statement does the ANC condemn the violent actions of Hamas or sympathise with the hundreds of casualties suffered by innocent Israelis, many of whom were attending a music concert for peace when they were attacked, abducted, and slaughtered.
Does this mean there is no merit in assessing Israel's guilt over the years in creating an unsustainable, explosive future for the citizens of the Middle East? Absolutely not. There is much merit in calling Israel an apartheid state, and I will leave it to better-qualified historians to outline the historical background of this conflict.
But what has been on show here, again, as in the wake of Russia's unilateral invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is the ANC's preference for shallow ideology over human rights. The party has genuinely and finally lost its moral compass.
Irrespective of how deep the party's ties go with the Palestinian authorities, a true moral force would have condemned both Hamas' attacks and Israel's subsequent retaliation, which also claimed the lives of hundreds, including women and children.
Instead of immediately choosing sides and denying the pain and suffering suffered by hundreds of Israelis, many of whom have family in South Africa, the ANC could have stood up for any innocent life lost by the three days' brutal attacks.
When the ANC turned to armed resistance during the struggle, the liberation movement was at pains to limit civilian injuries to the minimum.
Never in the history of uMkhonto weSizwe did the ANC's military wing launch attacks on apartheid South Africa at nearly the scale of what Hamas did on Saturday. But this was a different era when the ANC and its leaders still had a moral compass.
The ANC rightly criticises Israel for the desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque in April, but completely ignores the thousands of rockets fired by Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation not supported by all Palestinians, into Israel since Saturday, and the hundreds of people who militants took hostage.
The ANC does not mention the Tribe of Nova music festival, close to the Gaza border, where more than 260 youngsters from all over the world were dancing and singing in the name of peace before being shot down by Hamas' rockets, bombs, and machine guns.
To the ANC, the name of Shani Louk means nothing. Shani, a German tourist, was among the thousands of people at the Tribe of Nova music festival before she was abducted by terrorists and assaulted to the point of unconsciousness.
Her naked, bloodied body was paraded on the back of a track through the streets of Gaza, with her mother only able to identify her by her leg tattoos.
The ANC's call for "all sides to seize the opportunity for peace as opposed to violence" rings hollow in the face of a one-sided statement that completely ignores the atrocities of Hamas, as it did and still does Russia's brutal attack on Ukraine.
Luckily, the ANC and the government they lead do not represent the views of all South Africans, and millions of us can say at once that Israel is by no means innocent in this age-old conflict, but that Hamas was the aggressor in Saturday's horrific assault that peace-loving citizens of the world should roundly condemn.
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