Fearless genocide stance means we will pay a price
In terms of political upheaval and uncertainty, few countries have weathered what South Africa has. Despite our relatively small GDP per capita, we have always stood for the greater good for humanity, giving us the moral high ground.
Some of South Africa’s diplomatic campaigns have been detrimental to national interests such as the wellbeing of its citizens, but our role as the human rights beacon of the world reigns supreme. Whenever we have tested our resolve to the limit, it has been the wisdom of those in charge — the ANC — that rescued us, thanks to the respect that the ANC commands globally.
The decision by South Africa to stick its neck out in the Israel-Hamas war, which will go down in history as its second anti-apartheid frontier, might be the most costly one. The victory at the International Court of Justice has subjected South Africa and the ANC to a storm of heightened investment strikes by the friends of Israel, sophisticated regime-change funding, and a cocktail of decisions by the global pro-Israel lobby to supercharge the neutralisation of South Africa as an emerging existential threat to the moral legitimacy of Israel’s occupation ambitions for Palestinian territory.
In the words of South Africa’s chief diplomat, foreign minister Naledi Pandor, not only has Israel been forced to account, but those complicit in its yet-to-be-proven genocidal acts will also be held to account. What has not been properly highlighted as a risk to the stability of our constitutional and democratic order is Pandor’s statement that “when you take on a cause, you must expect that there will be retribution”. It is this expected retribution that South Africans are not engaging with.
The Israeli occupation of Palestine is incompatible with what defines South Africa as a nation; ditto the Holocaust. South Africa’s constitutional values cannot be reconciled with the occupation ambitions of Israel. South Africa’s concept of freedom for all exerts a powerful sway over how it relates to other nations, including those with an abnormal balance of trade deficit.
With apartheid having been declared a crime against humanity and genocide having been part of most occupations and land dispossession successes, South Africa is constitutionally obliged to act according to the foundations of its democracy. Reconciliation between South Africa and Israel would require deep ideological shifts by the two countries and their allies.
With US policy on the Middle East being dictated by the pro-Israel lobby, Washington’s relationship with South Africa will be subjected to scrutiny. Israel has been able to sustain a duality of pursuing human dignity, social justice, nonracialism, nonsexism, human rights, comprehensive freedom and the right to selfdetermination for the Jewish community on the one hand while ignoring Palestinian claims to these rights on the other. In Israel’s view, its occupation of Palestinian territory is moral, legal and somewhat legitimate.
The first shot in dealing with South Africa has been fired, and the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act has been lodged in Congress. The bill suggests that South Africa’s posture towards Israel would change if the ANC was no longer in office, or if the leadership of the party changed. It characterises South African foreign policy as that of the ANC; this makes the party out to be a liability for South Africans.
The bill in Congress declares that “the ANC’s foreign policy actions have long ceased to reflect its stated stance of non-alignment, and now directly favour the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and Hamas, a known proxy of Iran, and thereby undermine US national security and foreign policy interests”. This declaration creates a policy context to reposition the ANC’s relationship with US national security management, including its global apparatus for regime change. The thrust of the bill is to determine whether South Africa has engaged in activities that undermine US national security or foreign policy interests.
While South Africa’s human rights stand is incompatible with apartheid, genocide and imperialism, among other things, remaining true to it will have a cost for the health and wellbeing of our democracy.
If enacted, the US bill will redefine South Africa’s relations not only with Washington but with all its allies. The tectonic plates of international relations are shifting; the results will be more than we bargained for.