Seidman sent packing – diplomacy is war by other means

This past Friday, 30 January, the South African government unceremoniously booted out the acting Israeli ambassador to Pretoria, Ariel Seidman and, in a tit-for-tat reprisal, Israel gave the South African “ambassador to Palestine” 72 hours to vacate Ramallah, effectively ending our nation’s representation to the Palestinian Authority. 

Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously observed that “War is a continuation of politics by other means.” There’s a lesser-known corollary: “Diplomacy is war by other means,” and South Africa is the clear aggressor. 

Israel stands accused of offering to provide clean drinking water and boreholes to the parched people of the Eastern Cape, and offering to repair their collapsed healthcare system using the expertise of the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, consistently rated one of the top 10 hospitals in the world. 

For decades, Israel has provided agricultural seeds, drip irrigation, medical know-how, water recycling technology, and clean drinking water directly to the people of South Africa. Today, more than one million South Africans receive potable drinking water from an Israeli nongovernmental organisation, and the water from these Israeli solar-powered boreholes is used to irrigate land and provide people with sustainable income. 

Last week, the Israeli embassy was working on flood relief for Limpopo, a scandalous crime! 

What Israel does is no different to that of many other embassies in South Africa, albeit on a much grander and more effective scale. For the crime of assisting the people of South Africa, Israel must plead guilty. 

The South African government, one of the most corrupt regimes in the world, is no moral beacon. It behaves as the vassal puppet of the Iranian regime, beholden to its paymasters and acting as the agent of the jihadist mullahs in Tehran. 

South Africa claimed the moral mantle by dragging Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, accusing it of genocide. However, the thin facade of South Africa as a protector of human rights fractured on the country’s failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; shattered at the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) failure to condemn the Hamas invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023, with its massacre of 1 200 Israelis; and was buried by the government’s lack of concern over the reported slaughtering of 30 000 Iranian protesters on 8 and 9 January 2026. 

When South Africa abstained from voting in favour of a United Nations inquiry into the Iranian carnage, the final nail was driven into the coffin of South African credibility. 

Since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s invasion of Israel, nearly double the number of civilians have been killed in South Africa than Gaza and about 10 times the number of children have died of malnutrition in South Africa than Gaza itself. On raw numbers alone, South Africa looks like a war zone. 

South Africa hasn’t had an ambassador in Israel since 2018, and Israel recalled its ambassador to Pretoria for consultations in 2023. 

Judging by the Israeli embassy’s X (formerly Twitter) account, Israel simply got “gatvol” of the South African government’s double standards and hypocrisy. 

When President Cyril Ramaphosa, who supports sanctions on Israel, stated that “boycott politics doesn’t work”, a remark he made in reaction to United States President Donald Trump’s decision not to attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg, the Israeli embassy tweeted that this was a “rare moment of wisdom and diplomatic clarity from President Ramaphosa”. The president didn’t appreciate the compliment. 

Ramaphosa is the only democratically elected leader in the world who has chanted the genocidal slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, a call for the destruction of Israel. 

Multiple delegations visited Israel to see what was happening for themselves. Two grandchildren of former President Nelson Mandela visited Israel and Gaza and gave an honest account of what they saw, diametrically opposite to the South African government’s perspective. 

A multiparty parliamentary delegation visited Israel in April 2025; in October, 120 pastors visited; in November, Christian Church leaders visited the holy land; and in January 2026, National Pentecostal Forum leaders visited Jerusalem, all of them reporting contrary to the ANC’s jaundiced position. 

But the straw that broke the camel’s back was the visit to Israel by King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo KaSabata, king of the abaThembu people. The king is a powerful figure in the Eastern Cape, the ANC’s own heartland, where theft, corruption, and incompetence by government has impoverished the local inhabitants of the area. The king’s support for Israel and his request that Israel assist the people of the Eastern Cape was just too much for the ANC to endure. 

ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula spoke of the betrayal of the abaThembu king, a stalwart of the liberation struggle, who spent years in exile. For the ANC, it had to extract revenge on Israel. At the same news conference, Mbalula also announced a robust anti-American campaign announcing that the ANC and its allies would mobilise to oppose what they describe as “US imperialist aggression”. 

Polls by both the Social Research Foundation and the Brenthurst Foundation indicate that the ANC’s approach to Israel doesn’t have the backing of South African voters who are less likely to vote for the ANC as a result. The ANC now polls at only 37%. 

But the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) is more interested in theatre than diplomacy. Before Seidman was even informed by Dirco that he had 72 hours to vacate South Africa, media houses with television cameras were camping at the door of the Israeli embassy, a flagrant breach of diplomatic protocol. 

It’s unclear if Ramaphosa was even aware that Israel would have its envoy expelled. In a world where the army generals ignore the direct instructions of the president, it’s unclear if Ramaphosa has an inside track on what’s happening in the country. 

Over the past few months, Israel’s Foreign Ministry dispatched numerous “roving ambassadors” to South Africa to deepen ties with the South African population. Dirco viewed this as an attempt to impose a de facto ambassador in the country without its consent. 

However, under an agreement between the two countries, holders of diplomatic passports are exempt from visa requirements, allowing Israeli diplomats to enter and move around South Africa without approval. The refusal of Israeli roving ambassador David Saranga to operate “in the closet” appears to have angered the South African authorities. Dirco stated that Saranga had visited government hospitals without permission, mistakenly believing that it was running the East German Stasi. 

The apartheid regime expelled Israeli journalist and national director of the South African Union of Jewish Students, Dan Sagir, in 1985, and attempted, but failed, to expel Israeli/American head of the World Union of Jewish Students, Yosef Abramowitz, in 1986. Dirco’s actions are disturbingly reminiscent of the dark days of apartheid oppression. 

Some suspect Seidman’s expulsion was a proxy jab at Washington following the removal of Ebrahim Rasool as South Africa’s ambassador to the US. The jihadist-leaning cabal within Dirco may believe that targeting Israel indirectly strikes at Donald Trump. 

Pretoria’s decision has backfired on South Africa. 

Under an agreement from the 1990s, South African diplomats to “Palestine” are listed and accredited as embassy staff in Israel. Although South Africa refers to expelled diplomat Shaun Byneveldt as “ambassador to Palestine”, he is, in law, a representative in a representative office in Ramallah. He is accredited to and works through the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and accordingly, is subject to the Israeli ministry’s jurisdiction. 

Losing that representation is a devastating, self-inflicted blow that serves neither South Africa nor any coherent foreign-policy objective. 

As a result of this spat, ordinary South Africans may lose access to healthcare and clean drinking water. But politics, after all, is war, and South Africa appears willing to absorb many civilian casualties to achieve its ideological aims. 

• Howard Sackstein is a human rights activist; founder of the Jewish anti-apartheid movement; former executive director of South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission; a member of Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 election campaign, and chairperson of the SA Jewish Report. He writes in his personal capacity.