Cyril – was it worth it?

It was towards the start of 2024, shortly after South Africa cursed Israel with the charge of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), when my phone rang early one morning. It was a friend whose business exports high-end South African wines. His North American distributors were no longer willing to distribute our products after President Cyril Ramaphosa had accused Israel rather than Hamas of genocide.

Hamas led a murderous orgy of rape, torture, arson, and kidnapping in its invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023, slaughtering 1 200 victims in a single day, most of them civilians. On that day, South Africans were murdered and kidnapped. Ramaphosa didn’t seem to care, instead he wore a Palestinian keffiyeh and placed all the blame on Israel.

That morning, sitting in tashas in Melrose Arch, I was approached by a local businessman who, unsolicited, told me that his American partners with whom he had negotiated a deal for more than six months, had just pulled the plug, because of South Africa’s actions at the ICJ.

Later that afternoon, I bumped into a friend at the BluBird Shopping Centre to whom I told both stories. He told me that his American partners had just vetoed a $300 million (R5.5.billion) African Fund for the same reason.

It’s impossible to estimate the amount of money, jobs, and opportunity South Africa has lost as a result of its decision to take Israel to the ICJ, but estimates range into the tens of billions of rands and tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs. Foreign direct investment in the country has now been reduced to a mere trickle, and talk is that the United States (US) may try to expel South Africa from the G20.

South Africa’s behaviour towards the US and its venomous hostility towards Israel, a nation which has widespread and bipartisan support in the US, has made matters substantially worse for Pretoria. South Africa has very few friends left in Washington DC.

On 20 January, as part of a broad US review of foreign aid, the US issued a “stop-work order” for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the US’s R8.7 billion funding of South Africa’s HIV anti-retroviral programme. A temporary waiver was subsequently issued for limited “life-saving services”, but funding for PEPFAR has now expired.

In early March, a cable signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed the US government to “effectively implement EO 14204, all bureaus, offices and missions shall pause all obligations and/or dispersion of aid or assistance to South Africa”. This freeze appears to include a R800 million grant to the University of Cape Town (UCT), which has regularly hosted speakers from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. To top it all, UCT’s anti-Israel stance has resulted in a R400 million to R500 million donation withdrawn by the Donald Gordon Foundation, and a significant donation evaporate from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Dell has family in South Africa.

At a similar time, the US withdrew from its International Climate Finance Plan partnership, costing South Africa about R50 billion in green energy incentives.

Should the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) be renewed, which at this stage looks extremely unlikely, it’s almost certain that South Africa would be excluded, denying it preferential duty-free access to the American market. Economists believe 250 000 South African jobs are on the line, especially in the agricultural, citrus, grape, wine, and automotive industries. Last year, South Africa exported to the US about R25 billion in vehicle sales.

Intelligence agencies are tracking what is widely believed to have been Iranian money that illicitly entered the country and paid off not only the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) enormous debt but funded its election campaign. In order to avoid disclosure, Ramaphosa, days before the 2024 elections, revoked disclosure requirements for political parties, allowing ANC funding and foreign intervention into South African foreign policy to remain hidden behind a smokescreen of deceit.

While the ANC often tries to obfuscate its answers, the accusation against it is that the ANC received foreign money to pay off its debts and run its election campaign in return for using South African taxpayers’ money to fund its case against Israel at the ICJ.

Should the allegations of Iranian money be proven, Ramaphosa and his cabal of ANC officials are likely to face sanctions and have their assets frozen under the US’s Magnitsky Act.

It’s well know that the intelligence community warned Ramaphosa about the dire consequences of attacking Israel at the ICJ, but he decided rather to side with his then foreign minister, Dr Naledi Pandor, and the jihadist clique which has state captured the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco).

Many within the ANC are starting to wonder out loud if this deal with the devil was worth the price. Others are more concerned about growing Iranian influence over the ANC regime, and especially over the president.

The ANC has always found itself in the same ideological camp as the Palestinians, as it does with Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and the last remaining vestiges of the ideological Cold War, which ended decades ago.

Under the guidance of Pandor and Dirco Director-General Zane Dangor, the country has moved away from supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization/Fatah faction in favour of the Iranian backed militias of Hezbollah and Hamas.

Hamas has publicly claimed that Pandor called them to congratulate them on the success of Hamas’s attack on Israel. Pandor has denied Hamas’s version of the call, but two weeks after the invasion, she visited Iran for a single day, where many believe the ICJ strategy was conceived. A few weeks later, Ramaphosa paid a state visit to Qatar, another backer of Hamas.

Some foreign policy experts believe that Dirco has deliberately attempted to drive a wedge between South Africa and the West by sabotaging the president. They cite the timing of the appointment of Ibrahim Rasool as South African’s Hamas supporting ambassador to the US, days after a Trump victory, Rasool presenting his credentials in the last week of the Biden presidency. They refer to the misplaced Ramaphosa article in Foreign Policy magazine published on 25 February 2025, which the president is unlikely to have sanctioned; and the comments made by Rasool, all of which precipitated not just the end of American foreign aid to South Africa but resulted in the expulsion from the US of South Africa’s ambassador, consul general in Los Angeles, and military attaché.

Issues around expropriation without compensation; Black Economic Empowerment; and the singing of the song Kill the Boer have merely made matters worse for Pretoria.

Ramaphosa’s latest reported stunt, to appoint a token white Afrikaans ambassador to replace Rasool, is another grave misreading of the root of South Africa’s problems with the US.

South Africa has so far paid a very heavy price for its folly. It has angered its second largest trading partner and the country with whom it has its largest trading surplus. Hundreds of thousands of South Africans face unemployment, and our stagnant economy teeters on the brink of solvency.

Of course many in our community could help, but Ramaphosa has neither the insight nor inclination to ask, and our community has been too betrayed and hurt to volunteer to help.

If he was a wise leader, it would be time for Cyril to ask, was it worth it?

• Howard Sackstein is chairperson of the SA Jewish Report, but writes in his personal capacity.