As South Africa is preparing to present evidence against Israel in the International Court of Justice case in the second half of October 2024, its own illicit and questionable activities and its relations with Iran, the leading beneficiary of any blow to Israel, come under scrutiny. Part I and Part II of this series examined the network of family relationships in South Africa that facilitates corruption, including sub-rosa contracts and investments with and from Iran, Russia, and China, as well as South Africa’s curious relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other “Axis of Resistance” proxies. South Africa’s focus on Israel is driven by ideology and the benefits these relationships offer. Despite being poor, increasingly unstable, and fraught with political and social problems, South Africa is nevertheless becoming an important player in the global arena as a nexus for rogue state actors and terrorist organizations.
In a revealing analysis of South Africa’s foreign policy regarding the State of Israel published in the run-up to the Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine, held in Johannesburg’s upmarket Sandton area in May 2024, researcher and prominent BDS activist Na’eem Jeena contemptuously dismissed former Israeli ambassador to South Africa Arthur Lenk’s assertion of mid-October 2023, that South Africa “does not matter.”
Jeena was then Senior Researcher at the politically influential Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Research (MISTRA), under the leadership of veteran anti-Apartheid figure and post-Apartheid diplomat Abdul Minty, who also served as South Africa’s Ambassador to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and as an advisor to Naledi Pandor, then Minister of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO).
Minty and Pandor’s seminal input to the conference, including the latter’s plenary address in place of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was initially due to attend, showed that indeed, South Africa did count. In the election three weeks later, Pandor failed to win a seat in Parliament and retired from political leadership. Despite her retirement, Pandor remains a potent political voice. Although the historically powerful African National Congress (ANC) party lost formal political power, the “Grey Cardinals” of the families controlling it are still pulling its strings by operating through private companies and organizations. More important than official titles are the deeper-rooted ties linking South Africa to the ANC’s assorted nefarious counterparts. Despite limited political capacity, South Africa is playing an outsize role in lawfare and other information warfare attacks on Israel, as detailed in the preceding articles in this series.
However, South Africa’s soft power attacks on Israel are frequently a cover for commercial, defense, and political interests. These attacks center on exploiting the legacy and tactics of the 1980s anti-Apartheid movement to further the anti-Israel campaigns of today. As part of the Axis of Resistance, BRICS, and other international blocs, South Africa has the means, opportunity, and motive to do a great deal of damage.
Background
In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which “determine(d) that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” This was the culmination of Soviet antisemitic propaganda campaigns, especially in Western academia and the developing world. In 1983, Moscow formally established the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public, headed by David Dragunsky. That same year, in April, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s official newspaper, Pravda, ran a full front-page article entitled “From the Soviet Leadership,” which read in part:
..By its nature, Zionism concentrates ultra-nationalism, chauvinism, and racial intolerance, excuse for territorial occupation and annexation, military opportunism, the cult of political promiscuousness and irresponsibility, demagogy and ideological diversion, dirty tactics, and perfidy… Absurd are attempts of Zionist ideologists to present those who criticize them, or condemn the aggressive politics of Israel’s ruling circles, as antisemitic… We call on all Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, and representatives of the intelligentsia: take active part in exposing Zionism, strongly rebuke its endeavors; social scientists: activate scientific research to criticize the reactionary core of that ideology and aggressive character of its political practice; writers, artists, journalists: to more fully expose the anti-populace and anti-humane diversionary character of the propaganda and politics of Zionism…
This conspiracy-laden, antisemitic word salad bears no resemblance to actual Zionism, but is remarkably relevant, indeed a source, for the incoherent attacks on Israel today that appropriate the language of anti-apartheid and anti-racism to further hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. Like other “liberation movements” supported by the USSR, the ANC showed signs of influence by “Zionology” as early as the 1960s. ANC activists and thought leaders found common ground with like-minded Palestinian Arabs. By the 1980s, ANC officials were pushing the same line at the UN.
In 2001, Israel and the United States pulled out of the self-proclaimed World Conference Against Racism, also known as Durban I, in protest of a draft declaration that revived the language from 1975 by referring to “racist practices of Zionism and anti-Semitism” even though that resolution had been overwhelmingly repealed a decade earlier. The official UN body that organized the conference was stacked with antisemitic, anti-American, and anti-Israeli participants.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and South Africa
The Islamic Republic of Iran broke relations with South Africa in 1979, upon assuming power, and despite famously reverting to an allegedly non-aligned position that was “neither East nor West” as its formal policy of not following either the Soviet Union or the United States, Tehran mirrored the Kremlin concerning opposing Western-backed Pretoria. Nevertheless, defense trade between the Iranian regime and Pretoria predated the full restoration of diplomatic relations, since throughout the Iran–Iraq War (1980-1988): South Africa is believed to have sold defense technology to Iran in exchange for oil. In August 2023, a cooperation deal was signed between foreign ministers of Iran and South Africa. Iran reached an agreement with South Africa to develop and equip refineries in the African state. Under the agreement, the Iranian Oil Ministry will help to develop five refineries in South Africa by exporting technical and engineering services.
South Africa has not formally restarted its nuclear program after dismantling the Apartheid regime’s successful nuclear armament production, which reportedly led to the creation of six nuclear bombs, yet it refused to use sanctions or other coercive tools to force Iran to comply with inspections or limits to its nuclear program. South Africa’s devotion did not go unnoticed, as the country became the cornerstone of Iran’s “South-South” strategy, which during the Cold War echoed Russia’s allegedly anti-colonialist policy of backing or liberating “oppressed” peoples from countries and regions colonized by Western countries, but in the recent decades transitioned into a tool of influence for gaining “regional superiority in the Middle East and the Muslim world in general.” Moreover, Iran looked to South Africa’s nuclear experience as a direct inspiration for its own ambitions. Iran-South Africa cooperation is deeply rooted and has a long political history behind it; beyond mere economic ties, these relations reflect ideological closeness and common experiences predicated on resistance to the West.
Jeena, Pandor, and Minty know that Iran’s acceptance as a member of BRICS in January 2024 was the public expression of two decades of mutually beneficial commercial and military, including nuclear, collaboration with South Africa.
Iran is close to crossing the threshold of becoming a nuclear state and has already attacked Israel twice with ballistic missiles, once in April 2024 with the launch of 300 missiles and drones, and again in October 2024, with approximately 180 ballistic missiles. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said during an interview at the ASPEN Security Forum on July 19, 2024, that the breakout time for Iran’s nuclear weapon was approximately one or two weeks. There can be no room for doubt in assessing that South Africa has extensively facilitated Iranian interests to destroy the State of Israel. During a visit to Pakistan in April 2024, Iran’s late President Raisi said: “‘The Zionist regime will be destroyed if Israel attacks,” while vowing to continue supporting the Palestinian resistance. The new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke to Hamas leaders on July 12, 2024, and reiterated the words of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who asserted that the elimination of Israel is a divine promise and is feasible. Simultaneously, while South Africa has facilitated Iran’s genocidal wishes, Iran has strengthened China and Russia’s anti-West agenda around the BRICS table.
Senior ANC figures and the ANC government in Pretoria established commercial relationships with countries deemed by the democratic West to be rogue states and sponsors of terror, including Iran. These commercial and military connections have had knock-on effects, which are at the heart of the systemic problems currently besetting South Africa.
Iranian Connections: MTN
At the heart of the South Africa-Iran commercial rapprochement is the South African telecommunications conglomerate MTN, the largest mobile network operator in Africa which, active in over twenty countries, ranks among the largest internationally.
With its 49 percent stake in Iran’s second cellular licensee, Irancell, MTN is the most prominent of the South African companies enjoying extensive corporate relationships with their Iranian counterparts. Originally called M-Cell, MTN was founded in 1994 at the outset of the post-Apartheid transition to democracy. One of the first black-owned companies, it was established with government support.
Like South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa who was appointed to the MTN Board in 2001, and elevated to chairperson in 2002, many other company officials were prominent ANC activists. These included executive director Irene Charnley and chief executive, Phuthuma Nhleko who left in early 2007 and 2011, respectively.
Initiated in the early days of South Africa’s young democracy, the lengthy relationship between MTN and Iran is fundamentally corrupt. It is intrinsically linked to Iran’s military needs, nuclear aspirations, and activities, and would never have been possible without the involvement of key people associated with the IAEA, like Minty who worked to mitigate the sanctions environment in which Iran aspired to acquire nuclear weapons. The essentially kleptocratic involvement of senior ANC figures and political leaders who derived immense personal financial gain has ensured that the enterprise has been mired in controversy and legal action, including a matter currently in front of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
A decade after the transition to democracy, in 2004, MTN explored possibilities in Iran. At a time when the official Iranian regime telecommunication company (Mokhaberat, the fixed-line incumbent also offers DSL and data services for both residential and business customers) was the country’s sole structure responsible for mobile operations, MTN bid for what would be the highly lucrative second Iranian mobile phone operator license in what Nathi Nhleko, the former ANC Minister of Police and a Zuma ally, considered “one of the most significant ‘virgin’ mobile opportunities in the world.”
MTN had competition: Turkcell, an Istanbul-based company. Yet MTN executives understood that South Africa was “no normal country,” as they described it in a confidential company memo. Having maintained close ties with Tehran which, during the 1980s, supported the exiled ANC anti-Apartheid underground, and imposed a trade boycott on the Apartheid government, they maintained hope that they could win the bid. Fearing they had lost the bid to Turkcell, in 2004 Charnley sent her representative Christian Kilowan to Iran.
Much of what is known about MTN’s connection to Iran is from Kilowan’s testimony (including confirmatory MTN documents from his computers, provided, as evidence for Turkcell in their legal battle with MTN), from Reuters’ reporting of Kilowan’s deposition, and other documents to which they had exclusive access, as well as from papers currently held as evidence before the New York court.
In Tehran, Kilowan met South Africa’s ambassador to Iran, Yusuf Saloojee, who advised him that MTN should continue to pursue the second license despite the appearance of having already lost to Turkcell. Iran’s bidding rules required that as a foreign company, MTN partner with Iranian entities.
Following Turkcell’s lead, MTN partnered with two state-linked Iranian companies: Iran Electronics Industries (IEI) (Sairan in Persian), which Kilowan correctly understood to be an arms manufacturer owned by Iran’s Ministry of Defense, and which would become the target of United States and European sanctions that target proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and Bonyad Mostazafan, the Mostazafan Foundation of Islamic Revolution, which Kilowan knew reported directly to Iran’s supreme leader. South African investigative journalist team AmaBhungane correctly described Bonyad as a purportedly charitable body benefitting 1980s Iran-Iraq war veterans, while actually being one of the biggest holding companies in the Middle East, also linked to the procurement of WMDs.
Together with two South African diplomats, Kilowan met an IEI official around March 2004 for the first time.
During his meetings with several Iranians including Sairan and other government officials, Kilowan quickly understood that to overturn Turkcell, MTN would have to fulfill Iran’s burdensome demands. Iran’s arms manufacturer representative castigated South Africa for having failed to deliver the military equipment (radios) purchased by Iran the year before. “‘You should push your government that they must sell these things to us,” Kilowan quoted the Sairan official as saying. “I said, ‘Okay, I will. I will talk to my people, and they will talk to the government’,’” Kilowan said.
During their meetings with Kilowan, Iranian government and military officials repeatedly tabled two specific issues needing to be addressed to secure the contract: specifically, their military hardware requirements, including drone aircraft, and support for their nuclear development program.
South Africa’s Ambassador Saloojee showed Iran’s official “shopping list” to Kilowan; it included radar systems, armored personnel carriers, long-range cannons, and Rooivalk attack helicopters. “They want everything from the earth to the sea, and everything that is in the sea and everything that flies,” Saloojee said.
Kilowan understood that MTN’s success depended on devising a strategy for South Africa to provide Iran with military equipment (which was referred to in code as “the fish”), support in the IAEA, including providing Iranian military officials access to the relevant high-level South African government officials and defense contractors, as well as attaining the support of relevant ministers who would resolve “any bottlenecks.”
MTN: Connections with the South African Government
This was not difficult; MTN relied on its longstanding connections with the South African government which ANC heavyweights, including their chairperson Ramaphosa, enjoyed. It was public knowledge that anybody they needed to reach was a phone call away. Together with Charnley, Kilowan contacted South African defense contractors to fill the “fishing” order. They ensured the requisite diplomatic efforts by the South African government were in place to ease MTN’s successful entrance into Iran.
To assure the Iranians that MTN could deliver on defense matters, in August 2004 Charnley and Nhleko helped arrange a two-day visit to Tehran for South Africa’s then defense minister, Mosiuoa Lekota. They also ensured that the counterpart accompanying Lekota could be accessed easily by Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani.
Defense Minister Lekota’s visit attracted Iranian media attention. An Iranian news agency reported on the news conference at which Shamkhani confirmed discussions had taken place regarding expanding military, economic, and political ties, and an agreement to expand bilateral cooperation had been signed. Lekota affirmed Iran’s right to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Speaking subsequently to Reuters, Lekota confirmed he had travelled to Iran on official business, but distanced himself from any involvement in the process surrounding the MTN license. His successor as minister of defense, Lindiwe Sisulu, denied all knowledge of Lekota’s trip.
More forthcoming than his defense ministry counterparts was Aziz Pahad, South Africa’s former deputy foreign minister who, in August 2004, had also flown to Tehran, where he had preparatory talks including with the president of the Mostazafan Foundation, Mahmoud Farouzandeh, in preparation for a binational meeting later in the year.
In what amounted to public acknowledgment of the discussion between representatives of the South African government and Iran’s Supreme Leader about economic relations in the fields of communication (MTN) and nuclear energy, a Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) statement confirmed that Pahad and Farouzandeh had explored political and economic relations in these fields as well as electricity and oil.
By December 2004, at the South African-Iranian Joint Bilateral Commission, MTN executives could see the fruits of their strategy: Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa’s then foreign affairs minister, confirmed that $ 4 billion US dollars in South African investments in Iran were close to finalization. A joint statement issued the following day by the two governments indicated that MTN was among the six South African companies represented at the conference, and it had recently opened an office in Tehran.
In the end, the MTN deal did not result in the delivery of the arms sought by Iranian military officials. Charnley’s efforts in November 2004 to facilitate an attack helicopter deal between Sairan and Denel, the South African government-owned defense contractor, came to naught. While Denel had expressed interest in selling Iran “aviation technology,” the helicopter sale was dependent on American technology under sanctions to Iran, and would never materialize. According to Kilowan, the failure to deliver the arms (“the non-delivery of the full fish”) resulted in “sustained friction” between MTN and the Iranians.
The Nuclear Front and IAEA
The Iranians had more immediate success from MTN on the nuclear front.
At the time that South Africa was exploring the commercial potential in the Iranian telecommunications arena and putting down roots in Tehran, Iran itself was experiencing pressure from the United States, Europe, and Israel. International suspicion heightened increasingly, leading to a discussion in the IAEA in September 2005, in which Iran’s claims that its interest in nuclear energy was exclusively civilian were alleged to be a smokescreen for its covert construction of nuclear weapons.
Abdul Minty
No one person is more closely associated with South African nuclear energy than Minty, who has continued to serve in the same role for three decades.
Minty returned to South Africa in 1995, after serving as the honorary secretary of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement for more than 30 years, during which time, from 1979 until 1994, he held the position of Director of the World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa. He was soon appointed Deputy Director-General of the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Chairperson of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Non-Proliferation Council, the body responsible for export control of nuclear materials. When, in 1995, newly democratic South Africa took up the seat on the IAEA it had lost during the apartheid years, Minty was also appointed as South Africa’s representative to its board of governors, a position he continues to serve. He has previously served as a chairperson of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and as a member of the UN secretary-general’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters.
In the lead-up to the IAEA September meeting, South Africa and Minty assumed significant roles. Sympathetic to Iran’s nuclear program and wielding strong influence on other developing countries, South Africa was well positioned to play a negotiating role between the United States, Europe, and Israel on the one hand, and Iran, on the other. Positioned centrally in the dynamic between Iran and Western countries, South Africa and Minty were courted by all parties.
Towards the end of 2004, MTN helped pay for a trip to Cape Town by Iran’s then-chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani so he could meet with then-president Thabo Mbeki. MTN wined, dined, and spoiled Rowhani with presents, and covered his hotel bills. They also ensured the meeting between Rowhani and Mbeki.
Kilowan testified that in September 2005 around the time the IAEA was meeting to discuss Iranian nuclear activity, Iran insisted that MTN sign a partnership agreement including a clause that he understood to mean that MTN would support Sairan, particularly regarding defense matters, and would generally provide political support for the Iranian government in collaboration with the South African government. The agreement stated, “The cooperation between MTN and Iranian shareholders should be in the line of defensive, security, and political cooperation. MTN shall fully support cooperation regarding the issues in South Africa.”
The IAEA’s September 2005 meeting adopted the U.S.- and European-sponsored resolution finding, based on its inspectors’ reports, that Iran had failed to comply with its obligations under the agency’s Statute. Finding Iran guilty of violating its commitments as a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory, IAEA governors discussed referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council.
Consistent generally with South Africa’s sympathetic views on Iran and specifically with the cooperation agreement now in place between the two countries, Minty did not support the resolution and abstained from the vote. Shortly after this meeting and throughout October 2005, Turkcell started to become aware of the comments by South African officials, soon backed up by news reports, that they had not won the license, and had been replaced by another firm. MTN soon gave weight to the reports publicly for the first time, confirming that Iran and South Africa enjoyed good political and economic relations.
MTN was promised the telecommunications license in November 2005. But when Kilowan arrived to pick it up, an Iranian official told him it could not be issued until the outcome of the IAEA’s meeting in Vienna later that week, where Board members including Minty, were due to consider whether to proceed to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
Speaking at the meeting, Minty noted South Africa’s belief the IAEA’s September resolution on Iran was not the correct course of action.
Nuclear Sanctions
With Minty at the helm in the IAEA and MTN on the ground in Tehran, South Africa’s path markedly diverged from that of the United States and the European Union.
At precisely the time when the Western world was attempting by sanctions to deter Iran’s nuclear development program – blocking access to funds, including choking Iran’s banks from the international monetary system and embargoing its oil – South Africa and MTN worked in the opposite direction: Iran was paid massive licensing fees and capitalization costs estimated in the region of EUR 450 million.
The ANC was and remains, defiant. For example, in May 2012 ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe stated unambiguously that he had no problem with South Africa trading with Iran in any area, including weapons.
Minty at the Johannesburg Anti-Apartheid Conference
Minty has not gone away. Complicit with Iran’s breaking of sanctions and development of nuclear weapons for 20 years, at a time when Iran appears close to achieving its ambition of crossing the nuclear threshold, Minty continues to promote Iran’s interests even more widely now. He is explicitly identified with promoting Iran’s campaign to destroy the State of Israel.
He appeared recently at the Sandton, Johannesburg conference in early May 2024 promoting the global anti-Israel solidarity campaign modeled along the lines of the anti-apartheid campaign he had himself spearheaded in his youth in London. Speaking in the wake of the October 7,2023, invasion and less than a month after Iran launched 300 projectiles at Israel, Minty did not conceal his antipathy towards the Jewish state.
Aiming to mobilize a global anti-Israel campaign, Minty alleged that since its founding in 1948, Israel has been engaged in systemic campaigns of genocide. Representing the nascent Jewish state as partnering with admirers of Hitler, he claimed that Israel had been instructed by Western countries to cooperate with the pro-Nazi Afrikaner nationalist government.
Describing Jews and Afrikaners as “the two chosen people of the world,” Minty provided a biblical explanation for his claim that the West had advised Israel to work closely with the Apartheid state: “because they are the only two people in the world who claim they are chosen by God, the Afrikaners who rule over Africa and the Israelis wherever they are.” Minty claimed that on this basis former pro-Nazi Afrikaners and Jewish victims of Hitler “began to cooperate rather than be enemies,” in the fields of weapons production, nuclear and chemical capacities, and more.
MTN License
While not acknowledging direct linkage for Minty’s position at the IAEA, Christopher Kilowan testified that MTN had extensively pressed the South African government. Immediately after the IAEA meeting, MTN indeed received its license. They announced on November 27, 2005, that the company was the 49 percent shareholder in Irancell, which had been formally awarded the mobile operator license.
MTN’s Turkish competitor publicly attributed the Iranian licensing authority’s turnaround to the South Africans’ successful lobbying of their government to accept Iran’s terms: a contract in exchange for military equipment and support for its nuclear program.
Seeking to claw back damages for the lost contract, Turkcell initiated legal action against MTN. By 2012, the dispute was the subject of court action in which Kilowan testified and which revealed the fusion of commercial and diplomatic interests between commercial venture, senior ANC figures including Ramaphosa, and Iran’s military and nuclear aspirations.
In 2012, Rampahosa denied Turkcell’s allegations of a corrupt relationship with Iran, dismissing their Turkish counterparts as “extortionate.” “MTN has zero tolerance for corrupt and unethical business practices,” Ramaphosa stated. After he was elected ANC Deputy President in 2012, in 2013 Ramaphosa resigned from MTN’s board of directors.
Launching in October 2006, Irancell quickly became one of MTN’s most valuable holdings, generating significant profit for its shareholders. MTN Irancell has become Iran’s fastest-growing mobile phone operator (in 2012, Reuters reported it held 45 percent of the Iranian market). By 2011, nine percent of MTN’s reported annual revenue of $1.3 billion was derived from its Iran venture.
Zobay v MTN
MTN has introduced systemic problems across the board in South African politics, foreign affairs, commerce, and public morality. MTN’s involvement in human rights abuses and crimes is gaining increasing international attention.
It is now the subject of legal action in the New York Eastern District Court. Following an extensive investigation, including thousands of hours examining the terrorist campaign in Iraq and how Hizbullah and similar terrorists funded themselves through illicit corporate deals with companies like MTN, the company is being sued for its role in enabling terror.
In the complaint filed by Washington, D.C.-based law firm Sparacino PLLC on behalf of tens of American military veterans who served in Iraq and families of deceased soldiers, MTN, perceived as an official joint venture partner with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), is being sued for its support for Iran-backed terrorist cells comprised of Hizbullah, Jaysh al-Mahdi and the IRGC, including its subordinate Qods Force branch.
Charging MTN with aiding and abetting terrorism in Iraq, the complaint alleged it had provided critical funding, resources, technology, and military equipment that was useful for the terrorist campaign and to the terrorist fronts controlled by the IRCG. These included Bonyad Mostazafan which raised money and obtained weapons for the terrorists who murdered Americans in Iraq. The complaint alleges that MTN violated U.S. law and circumvented the international sanctions regime designed to deprive terrorists targeting Americans in Iraq of money and key technology.
Greylisting
South Africa is reeling under the effects of the ANC leadership’s entrenched and corrupt commercial partnerships and relationships with rogue states and entities regarded as terrorists by Western democracies. Terror organizations operate in broad daylight throughout South Africa, supported and promoted by government officials and DIRCO.
It is no surprise that South Africa has fallen foul of basic mechanisms to prevent financial corruption. In 2023, after assessing South Africa’s evident failure to combat illicit financial activity and money laundering, and counter-terrorist financing, the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) put South Africa on its grey list, pending full-scale blacklisting within a year if it fails to remedy the concerns including, among a list of items, inadequate investigations and prosecutions of money laundering and terrorism financing and inaccurate terrorism financing risk assessment.
National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank were ostensibly responsible for dealing with the grey listing and have responded proactively. However, they have limited scope to reform money laundering, put financial crime measures in place, and ensure the compliance of other departments. This is the job of Ramaphosa and his office.
While placing great emphasis on human rights and the international rule of law, Ramaphosa has failed to demonstrate the political will to uphold and promote these values and mechanisms on his own national front and take the requisite steps to remove South Africa, his own country, off the grey list.
Magnitsky Act
Another clear indication that Ramaphosa and the political leadership have no intention to deal meaningfully with the self-serving corruption and kleptocracy that has overtaken South Africa, is his refusal to take steps to prevent it. These include the adoption of a Magnitsky-type mechanism.
Passed in the United States in 2012, the Magnitsky Act was a piece of legislation tailor-made to punish the Russian officials responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer investigating tax fraud on behalf of CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, Bill Browder.
Several years later, in 2016, with the introduction of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (GMA), the legislation was expanded to include human rights offenders worldwide. The GMA increased the scope of action against the corrupt to allow the U.S. president to impose economic sanctions on human rights abusers and corrupt government officials wherever they lurked in the world.
The Magnitsky Act is an important piece of legislation in the global fight against money laundering and corruption across borders. Deeply affected by the corruption and kleptocracy that benefitted from the legal mechanism, South Africa is strikingly not among the more than 30 countries that have adopted a version of the Magnitsky mechanism.
Browder appears remotely occasionally in South Africa where he shares his experience in Russia, and more recently promoted his Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign. His connections to the country are strong. He owns a home in Cape Town, which served as his “happy place” when he felt free to visit; he has stayed away for the last 10 years, fearing Putin’s reach into Russia-friendly South Africa. More fundamentally, the idea for what became the Magnitsky Act was born on a visit to Cape Town.
Mourning his friend Magnitsky, Browder sought comfort in movies with a human rights theme including Cry Freedom, based on the life of anti-Apartheid South African black consciousness leader Steve Biko and the successful efforts of liberal white newspaperman Donald Woods to bring the truth of Biko’s murder at the hands of the security police to world attention. Woods’ success in turning his grief at the death of Biko into a global antiapartheid campaign inspired Browder and eventually turned into the legal weapon named after his friend.
Speaking recently via video address to a South African audience, Browder criticized some South African government officials’ close ties with Putin and Russia as shameful. He called on South Africa to adopt a Magnitsky Act.
Conclusion
The fact that the ANC’s well-publicized deleterious financial affairs experienced a positive turnaround shortly after South Africa launched the International Court of Justice case created speculation that the ANC-led government brought the case on behalf of and in return for bribes from Iran, Hamas’s major sponsor.
South Africa was not so much compliantly doing Iran’s bidding as Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder and president of Shurat HaDin, an Israeli lawfare NGO has asserted.104 More accurately, embedded in their shared interests, South Africa is the joint venture partner of the Iranian regime. Darshan-Leitner’s call for the United States to launch a comprehensive investigation of the financial connections between South Africa and Iran is well-founded.
In addition, the relationship between the United States and South Africa is under the spotlight. Due in part to South Africa’s wrongful accusation of genocide against Israel, and its warm and uncritical relationship with Iranian proxy Hamas, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation in May 2024 requiring the Biden administration to fully review its relationship with South Africa.
If passed into law, South Africa stands to lose the preferential trade provided by the Africa’s Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), part of the Trade and Development Act of 2000 which provides duty-free access to the U.S. market for almost all products exported from eligible sub-Saharan countries. Eligibility criteria for AGOA include that beneficiaries do not provide support for acts of international terrorism such as perpetrated by Hamas or engage in activities that undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.
Deepening cooperation with the industrialized northern hemisphere remains a key foreign policy for South Africa. Hoping to prevent the U.S.-SA Bilateral Relations Review Act from being signed into law, South Africa sent a high-level delegation to the African Growth and Opportunity Act forum in Washington DC between July 24 and 26 to lobby members of Congress against enacting legislation for a full review of relations between the two countries.
At the same time, notwithstanding attempts by trade representatives in Washington and Pretoria to downplay the tensions in the interests of what both parties acknowledge is a mutually beneficial relationship, DIRCO representatives continue to explicitly insist Israel is perpetrating genocide against Israel.
While recognizing the importance of the development assistance South Africa receives from America in the form of the Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Alvin Botes, DIRCO deputy minister who was party to the ICJ case, cemented South Africa’s wrongful accusation of genocide against Israel as adjudicated fact while speaking recently in Parliament. And by failing to condemn Hamas’s terror, he continues to uphold it as legitimate political resistance in the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, which DIRCO is working with Hamas and other Palestinian factions to achieve.
Along with brothers Zane and Mohammed Dangor, the initiators of South Africa’s absurd foreign policy towards Israel and the United States, Botes, following in the footsteps of his previous boss, Naledi Pandor, and his current boss Ronald Lamola, who led the South African delegation to the Hague in January 2024, is transparent in his double-dealing deception.
Dismissing South Africa is a fallacy that the South African Jewish community and world Jewry can no longer afford.
South Africa needs help from its international friends to escape the kleptocracy that is rapidly expanding beyond the economic arena. The ANC government has exploited sophisticated methods of soft power learned during the real apartheid years and has captured hearts and minds in service of global jihad.
Friends of South Africa should desist from supporting Pretoria’s trade and financial arms, while South Africa’s foreign affairs attachés continue supporting Iran, Russia, and its proxies.
It is unrealistic for South African patriots to expect the international community to turn a blind eye to Pretoria’s warm foreign affairs relations with hostile states including Russia, Iran, and terror proxies while simultaneously seeking continued support for trade, finance and, social development including in the forms of AGOA.
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Notes
