APA-Pretoria (South Africa) The South African government has no business tracking down members of Hamas who are in this country on private business, Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, has said.
The minister was on Thursdays replying to a reporter’s question about the group’s visit to South Africa as other countries had declared Hamas, which is fighting Israel in the Gaza Strip, as a terrorist organisation.
Hamas announced this week that a three-member senior delegation was in the country to participate in the Fifth Global Convention of Solidarity with Palestine which starts in Johannesburg on Saturday.
Responding to the question, Ntshavheni said her government could not be expected to account for the presence of Hamas in the country if its members were here on private business.
As the UN had not declared the organisation a terrorist group, the government would not track the presence of individuals on such visits, she said.
“I don’t recall the UN classification of Hamas as terrorists and we are not tracking the presence of individuals in the country,” the minister said.
She added: “We don’t know of a Hamas office in South Africa. So I can’t say there’s Hamas [or] there’s no Hamas. We do not have that type of evidence.”
The minister said it was the responsibility of the UN to classify any groups as “terrorist organisations.”
Otherwise, the African National Congress would have been declared a terrorist organisation “because the apartheid regime had called the ANC a terrorist organisation,” she said.
NM/jn/APA