South Africa accused of dancing to Iran’s tune over Israel human rights case

The report, titled South Africa, Hamas, Iran, and Qatar: The Hijacking of the ANC and the International Court of Justice, alleges that South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, has established strategic relationships with terrorist groups and their allies and, as a part of that relationship, filed the case at the ICC alleging Israel was carrying out a genocide.

South Africa filed its case against Israel on Dec. 29, 2023, less than three months after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of about 250 others. Its suit alleges Israel’s military is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip.

The ISGAP’s report highlights the dire financial straits that the African National Congress found itself in previously and how it seemingly found its way out of that hole around the time that it filed the case. The party has faced accusations of corruption and the possibility of bankruptcy since at least 2021, according to the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. The ANC reached an out-of-court settlement in late December 2023, and shortly after, the ANC announced it had stabilized its financial situation and launched the case against Israel the same week. 

“Crucially, this money appeared in the ANC’s coffers without explanation, mere days after the South African government brought its case against Israel at the ICJ,” the report said. “The debt was owed to a South African company called Ezulweni Investments, which printed material for the ANC’s 2019 election campaign. On December 29, 2023, South Africa approached the ICJ to ask that Israel’s actions in Gaza be classified as genocide.”

The preliminary cost of bringing a case to the ICJ is approximately $10.5 million, with a trial running as high as $79 million. “Given the enormity of the cost, it is difficult to dismiss the argument that South Africa was the beneficiary of considerable external support,” the ISGAP report states.

South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola traveled to Tehran to participate in the swearing-in of President Massoud Pezeshkian in late July. Lamola met with Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri during the trip.

“Bagheri hailed Lamola for his outstanding role as an undaunted and innovative diplomat in pursuing the case of the Zionist regime’s crimes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the special efforts by the South African government to denounce the regime’s crimes in international legal and judicial circles,” an Iranian readout said.

In November of last year, the ANC released a statement in honor of its 30-year anniversary of having diplomatic relations with Qatar, and in the statement, it said the bilateral trade between them was at about $300 million in 2012 and was up to nearly a billion dollars after a decade, demonstrating their growing relationship. 

Israel’s critics have accused it of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians, which its leaders vehemently deny. Israel’s leaders argue they are fighting against Iran and the multiple proxies it has built up and supported throughout the Middle East. 

Israeli forces are believed to have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the last year, and even Israeli officials acknowledge that only about half of those casualties were terrorists. Hamas has diverted billions of dollars of humanitarian aid to develop its military infrastructure.

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Another aspect of Hamas’s overarching strategy is to turn popular opinion against Israel.

In July, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories is “unlawful” and called on it to end swiftly.