President Cyril Ramaphosa with His Grace
President Cyril Ramaphosa with His GraceFelix Dlangamandla /Daily Maverick/Gallo Images

A third rate power with a trash bin economy may not be the likeliest geopolitical threat. Real enough though, South Africa with abundant resources below ground and a depraved party at the helm, bleeps code red at Trump’s foreign ambitions, for the Middle East most of all. Sanctions on the ruling party cannot come too soon; already Tehran has plucked this low lying fruit turning putrid in the noonday African sun.

As a rule economies in Africa don’t fall, they plummet. Three decades after the end of Apartheid and a succession of wrecking crews, a ponderous hippo of a President nicknamed ‘Cupcake’ presides over a failed state run by criminal syndicates, from top to bottom. South Africa ticks every box for a failed state defined by, “a government too weak or ineffective to provide public services; has widespread corruption and criminality, refugees and sharp economic decline.”

The long and the short of it is that black liberators from Apartheid inherited the economic hub of Africa only to succumb to self-grandeur and greed. Comrades (among old communists endearments die hard) could not wait long enough to build on this good fortune and cut a bigger pie for their erstwhile deprived people. “We didn’t struggle to be poor” seems to have been the top echelon’s refrain.

And that is when they got in with the wrong crowd. At the United Nations South Africa allied itself with Israel-hating failed states – the two parts go together. Walter Russell Mead gives a tart lesson for this truth.

“Quite sane leaders when it comes to Israel lose their minds. Nations and political establishments warped by Israel-hatred tend to make one dumb decision after another.”

One way or another, dumb policy abroad invariably rubs off on dumb domestic policy. South Africa boasts a jobless rate higher than anywhere in the world; a full one-third of adults are out of work.

And so it proved. All the evidence admits of one conclusion: Iran paid a broke political party to haul Israel before the ICJ for the ultimate crime – Hitler’s crime – against humanity. Its own Foreign Minister alluded to the deal by lauding the “cooperation (between South Africa and Iran) in international judicial fields.”

As if craven abuse of an international court were not enough, the party in power has presided over the country’s descent into a hub for money-laundering on behalf of Iran and its network of terrorist groups. Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemenite Houthis do the Mullah’s military bidding while South Africa is the useful idiot, keeping Israel on tenterhooks with lawfare. Really, travel and asset freezes on the members of such a government are long overdue.

Aggravating circumstances are no secret. South Africa facilitated Iran’s membership of the BRICS bloc of nations, anti-West in focus and dominated by America’s superpower contenders China, India and Russia. Admittance to this club gave the globe’s number one sponsor of terror a priceless legitimacy. Other bad actors have been sucked into the quagmire that is South Africa. Qatar, the ‘moderate’ face of terrorism and still handier, West-oriented, has invested in the country’s energy projects. Both regimes have been influential lobbyists for eliminating Israel through the backdoor, better known and promulgated as the “Two state solution”.

To underscore how brazenly these Communist-inclined ne-do-wells conduct lawfare against Israel, a mere week before their team departed for The Hague complete with crack jurists – antisemites to the core, every one of them – the government hosted a Sudanese warlord connected with genocide in Darfur. The visit was followed by that of another warlord, senior Hamas aficionado Bassem Naim who, with the rabidly anti-Jewish grandson of Nelson Mandela, laid a wreath at the foot of the icon’s statue.

Such are the bad actors threatening to scupper the new Trump administration’s vision of a new Middle East freed of terrorism and crisscrossed with holy alliances.

Of course it will tack differently to Biden’s crew that passively objected to the repugnant spectacle of Israeli leaders fending off a tit-for-tat courtroom trial. (Israel once put Adolf Eichmann in the dock for genocide.) Trump would never let an African government on the skids make bad mischief for Israel – in his first term he purportedly called African countries "s***holes"

As it is, South Africa’s gambit at the ICJ has already made life difficult for Israel. Quite respectable countries like Ireland and Spain have joined a case which badly fractured international support for Israel. The mere mention of it being tried for genocide carries a stigma.

And what if the court finally makes a ruling unfavourable to Israel? Though unenforceable, like the ICC arrest warrants on Israeli leaders it would entangle the Jewish state in all manner of traps and tricks in the world arena.

Such are the political arguments for President Trump slapping travel and asset freezes on what is really a bloated upper crust of lowlife comrades wielding the reins of power in order to plunder what is left of the fat of the land.

Over and above those arguments, are equally cogent factors concerning business practice. And treason:

From 2013 to 2016, certain multinational companies were accomplices of ‘State capture’ whereby a former President named Zuma flogged South Africa, lock, stock and barrel, throwing in the executive function of government, to three brothers newly arrived from India. American, German and Japanese companies were co-opted to help bleed the treasury. Boston-based Baines Consulting acted with the President and his grubby cronies to cripple the revenue service. Big 5 accounting firm, KPMG fiddled accounting practices to bury kickbacks. Big 5 Deloittes fraudulently invoiced the power utility five times over. Software giant, SAPS bribed for tenders. Mitsubishi Hitachi inflated the cost of a power plant. No executive got fired, let alone prosecuted. Only Baines, being arm-twisted, repaid some of the billions in ill-gotten gains.

Millennials won’t be slow learning the moral of the story: crime is the quick, low risk and tax-free road to wealth. Motor showrooms in Cape Town and Johannesburg are packed with Rolls and Bentleys, Ferraris and McLarens, this when South Africa hasn’t had GDP growth in years and the President traipsed to Davos to beg the rich to invest in his country where land can be seized by fiat.

Here is a tweet for President Trump: “Mr Ramaphosa, sir, explain how your intent to seize land is consistent with the willingness of investors to invest.” Or, “Mr Ramaphosa sir, give an example or two of countries where land seizure did not damage the economy.” Or how about this for a Trump tweet? “Lead by example, Mr Ramaphosa, sir. First expropriate some of your land holdings.”

President Trump should lose no time imposing sanctions on this crippled mischief maker. Israel will owe him a debt of gratitude. As will the deprived electorate of the “Rainbow Nation”, which, excepting workers in the purposely bloated public sector, voted for trustworthy and competent government.

In a secondary swipe, assets frozen and travel restricted will act as a warning to Iran to remove its muddy boot marks, first from the foot of Africa, then from the Middle East.

Steve Apfel is an economist and former director of the School of Management Accounting. He is a prolific author of non-fiction published in many journals and sites. His books include: ‘The Paymaster’ (Fiction); Hadrian’s Echo: The whys and wherefores of Israel’s critics (non-fiction); ‘War by other means’ (contributor); and ‘‘Hitlers at heart’ (non-fiction) at publishers.