It is now sadly all too obvious how far South Africa has fallen from the heady days, more than three decades ago, when there was so much hope and so much inspiration, led, of course, by the remarkable qualities of Nelson Mandela.
At that time, he led South Africans in showing the world how one emerges from conflict, determined to include others for the benefit of all. South Africa’s population rose to his example and followed his lead and started the long slow business of making the country fairer for all, without rejecting anyone, after decades of apartheid.
But regrettably his successors were made of poorer stuff, reaching perhaps its most disastrous nadir with the kleptocratic Zuma.
So, it’s no surprise that hopes were bound to rise when the current president took office a few years back. Cyril Ramaphosa, surely the last of the ‘freedom fighter’ presidents, entered the post on a wave of goodwill despite everyone knowing that the legacy he had been bequeathed was deeply poisoned. Clearly, he would have to steer carefully to work his way away from the traps that had been set for him by his predecessors’ misdemeanours.
But instead, he appears to have only made matters worse. Surrounded by poor quality rabble-rousers in his government, he and they have set the worst example and an even more destructive course for his country. It is no surprise that things are deteriorating still further to the point where his long-time ruling ANC party has finally thrown all the goodwill it had earned away – the public denied the ANC a majority for the first time in the last general election.
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa at the ICJ
But it seems Ramaphosa’s government has learnt nothing. Obscenely, it continues to destroy any understanding of the true nature of Apartheid under which their compatriots suffered for so long. Instead, they have joined in with misusing the word as a stick to beat Israel with. What a betrayal!
And worse, they have so forgotten Mandela’s example of love in the face of hate, they have allied themselves with haters and racists whose founding principles are genocidal (Hamas), hate-filled (Iran) or unprovoked aggression and expansionism (Russia).
Even in its most desperate days fighting the Apartheid regime, the African National Congress never behaved with the depravity that is evidently routine for Hamas/Hezbollah, Iran or Russia.
Any sensible observer of world affairs would be troubled by this, but the problem looks even bigger, sitting as I do in the chief executive’s chair of the Commonwealth Jewish Council.
The Commonwealth purports to be an organisation with a number of high principles at its heart. They include opposition to racism (of course!) But the ANC and the governments it has led are unique amongst Commonwealth governments – and rare in the wider world – in being entirely indifferent to the rise of antisemitism.
Clive Lawton
Indeed, worse than that, they actually deny that there is any. One of their ministers, to justify that belief, claimed that Jews ‘trade amongst us perfectly successfully’, unwittingly (or not?) indicating that she did not believe that South African Jews were citizens of their country. ‘They’ amongst ‘us’?!
Horrific events, clearly deeply distressing to its Jewish citizens, like the disgusting pantomime of Hamas messing about with the bodies of a baby, a toddler and their mother, simply evoked expressions of sympathy for Gazans – entirely reasonable – but nothing for Jews, while the rest of the world expressed its disgust.
Deep in the heart of the South African malaise is its out-of-date conviction that siding with the ‘enemies of the West’ polishes its credentials as a friend of the global South.
Presumably it is for this reason that it cosies up to the malevolent Iran, warmly hosts the murderous Hamas, buddies up with Russia and generally – and bizarrely – seems to be trying to manoeuvre itself once again, as it was in those bygone Apartheid days – into being a pariah state for all right-thinking people.
With the country literally struggling to keep the lights on, it has allocated a further few tens of millions to hounding an Israel mired in war, and meanwhile courts Iran and other sponsors of terror and seems happy to be seen in the company of countries that really do engage in unprovoked aggression. How can a country fall so far?
In the middle of all of this, South Africa finds itself being bestowed with the mantle of Chair of the G20 for 2025, leading to a G20 summit later this year. Already the United States has indicated that it will have nothing to do with it, but unfortunately it is not easy currently to be sure of the best way to relate to American international initiatives.
Screenshot: Twitter/X
Cyril Ramaphosa at the ICJ
Maybe the other 18 countries will just have to hold their noses and turn up to South Africa however unpleasant its associations and rhetoric. After all, we’ve also had Iran on the Human Rights Council of the United Nations so nothing much can be read into the simple workings of countries getting their turn, however unsuitable.
However, amongst the G20 countries are a number of Commonwealth countries who are signed up to fraternity and opposition to racism. These include Australia, Canada, India and the UK.
All of these have made clear how they are rightly repulsed by antisemitism, and they know too how important it is to stamp it out as soon as it appears. A government actually making matters worse must be about as far from their principles as can be imagined. None of these countries have reason to like South Africa’s recently cultivated bedfellows either.
Africa at least, if not the world at large, needs South Africa to play the part that we all hoped it might after those heady days in the 1990s. We were all inspired to believe that South Africa might be a leader for the whole continent, blessed as it is with resources, talent and capacity. None of us can be enjoying watching this great country doing itself harm so egregiously.
Is it possible that the Commonwealth and its members, perhaps especially that very large bloc in Africa, or those Commonwealth countries that are also part of the G20, might gently take South Africa’s leaders aside and ask them to think again. After all, we all need her to live up to her promise and do better for the benefit of all.
But now, with South Africa on its knees and its leadership squandering its credit both moral and financial with absurd posturings on the international stage, how long will it be before the world says, ‘Just get your own house in order and stop trying to be a leader of the world’s worst regimes’?
- Clive Lawton is chief executive of the Commonwealth Jewish Council
