When South African peace activist Klaas Mokgomole first arrived at Israel’s main international airport outside Tel Aviv, he asked where the “Blacks-only” bathroom was.
The former anti-Israel activist, who had been taught that Israel was an “apartheid state,” thought the Ben-Gurion International Airport official, who looked at him quizzically, simply didn’t understand his English.
“What do you mean, Blacks-only bathroom?” the dumbfounded Israeli airport official replied.
Mokgomole, who was on his first-ever visit to Israel, told the official that he didn’t want to be arrested for using the wrong restroom.
“Choose any you like,” the official told him.
The South African entered a men’s room and was shocked to see Jews, Arabs and Christians, Whites and Blacks together.
“Maybe it’s only the airport because it is an international place,” he told himself, “and we will see the real apartheid when we get into the country.”
Transformative trip
The 2015 visit proved to be a turning point for the former activist for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which advocates boycotts of Israel, who just a year earlier had been expelled from his Johannesburg university for violently disrupting an Israeli cultural event.
In the decade since that trip, the 35-year-old South African from a small village in Limpopo Province has undergone a remarkable transformation, going from a hardcore anti-Israel activist to a staunch advocate for Israel and coexistence.
“My life changed when I chose to replace certainty with curiosity,” he told JNS on Monday. “Seeing the realities on the ground and engaging with people from different backgrounds transformed me into someone who believes that coexistence, not division, offers the best path forward.”
Mokgomole, who now speaks internationally and runs educational programs about Israel from his home in the South African township of Soweto, was back in the Jewish state last month with the Israel-based nonprofit consultancy Secret Light ahead of the publication of his memoir this fall, tentatively titled Klaas in Session.
Radicalized youth
His transformation has been nothing short of extraordinary.
Speaking at a private home in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, Mokgomole recounted his radicalized youth as a student leader in the ruling African National Congress party, which, a decade before the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent “From the River to the Sea” demonstrations, held rallies at which demonstrators chanted, “One Jew, one bullet” and “Kill the Jews, kill the Zionists.”
“We were already radicalized,” he said, noting that Israel was constantly compared to apartheid South Africa. “You are with people who have never been to the Middle East, and you just take it all in.”
After violently shutting down an Israeli piano recital organized at his university, Mokgomole was found guilty of misconduct and expelled.
His mother, who knew little about Israel beyond what she had read in the Bible, was devastated, he recalled, while his brother urged him to research an issue before joining any movement.
Offer to visit Israel
Using a gift voucher, Mokgomole bought a book on Israel by prominent American jurist Alan Dershowitz. Soon afterward, a friend connected him with a trip to Israel organized by the South African-Israel Forum, which was willing to give the former BDS activist a chance.
Defying warnings and online ridicule from former student leaders who urged him not to go, Mokgomole traveled to Israel. After his multiracial airport restroom experience, he was struck by a visit to the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where he learned that, in the years before the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, residents had just 15 seconds to reach shelter from Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.
“I realized that BDS never told me that part of the story, and their campaign for Palestine was a mask for preaching hatred against Jews,” he said, referring to the anti-Israel boycott movement.
From that point on, Mokgomole said, he resolved to educate students back home about what he had seen firsthand in Israel “so that they don’t fall for the same trap of misinformation and think out of the box.” He now works with South African Jewish organizations to build bridges between African and Jewish communities.
An avid runner, he has also participated in the Jerusalem Marathon as part of his unusual journey, including during wartime.
“Israel is very bad at PR,” he lamented. “After Oct. 7, the world was supposed to be on Israel’s side.”
