Pandor continues anti-Israel campaign

During Dr Naledi Pandor’s tenure as South Africa’s foreign minister, the country faced a lack of trade and economic opportunities; neglected valuable and strategic alliances over outdated alliances; and continued to pursue ideological inconsistencies. And, Pandor has come to see herself as the main tenet of the country’s foreign policy ecosystem even outside the government forum. 

As chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, she used her influence to bring United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to deliver the 23rd Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture last month. The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) played a vital role in Albanese’s visit. It was a calculated political strategy to strengthen the lawfare campaign against Israel. But it went a bit further than that; it was a move by South Africa to pursue its anti-Western agenda. 

The foundation and Dirco well understood that the United States Treasury had previously sanctioned Albanese for “directly engaging with the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel”. It’s against this backdrop that the US has taken the posture that South Africa has been undermining the national security of the US and that of its allies in recent years. This political backdrop between the US and South Africa continues to generate severe economic, trade, political, and diplomatic repercussions. 

It’s short-sighted for our government to align itself with – or befriend – any state simply because it’s opposed to Western nations. Countries within the Global South that choose to challenge Western powers are free to do so, but South Africa shouldn’t be drawn into these confrontations. 

South Africa, through Dirco, must manage its international relations responsibly and impartially, engaging all nations without hostility or favouritism driven by narrow political interests or the agendas of specific groups. Our diplomacy should be grounded in principle, not ideology. 

We carry a sacred duty to build the nation envisioned by Nelson Mandela: one that eradicates poverty; confronts inequality; addresses landlessness; strengthens good governance; and restores dignity by improving the lives of all its citizens. These urgent priorities must not be overshadowed by unnecessary geopolitical battles that do little to advance the well-being of South Africans. 

What’s clear is that South Africa is obsessed with the US and Israel as it hasn’t had a principled approach to dealing with global conflicts. The African National Congress’s hard stance against the US and Israel has been absent in regard to the Russian government attacking Ukraine over the years, and its silence can still be heard loudly. While children and women continue to be killed and abducted for ransom in Sudan, our government has said nothing. The tyrannical ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) in Zimbabwe, our neighbour, continues to abuse its own citizens, whose human rights are non-existent. Christians in Nigeria are being slaughtered daily without our government condemning or acting against such heinous crimes against humanity. 

South Africa must adopt a principled, objective, and impartial approach when pursuing global peace. Consistency is essential. The stance we take in one conflict should be mirrored in our response to others of a similar nature. 

However, South Africa’s involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict doesn’t appear to be driven by a genuine search for a lasting and balanced resolution. Instead, it seems to advance an anti-Western agenda and reinforce alignment with countries such as China, Russia, and Iran, nations widely regarded as adversaries of Western political ideals. 

• Kenneth Kgwadi is a research fellow at the Middle East Africa Research Institute and holds a Master of Arts in African Studies from Ben Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).