A Chief Justice of South Africa with the unlikely double name, Mogoeng Mogoeng was adamant that God’s promise to Abraham, concerning a curse, would inflict his government unless it mended its ways.
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“I’m under an obligation as a Christian to love Israel, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which actually means the peace of Israel. And I cannot do anything other than love and pray for it because I know that hatred for Israel can only attract unprecedented curses upon (South Africa).”
He got mocked for his trouble. Then forgotten. After a passage of time the country’s President, bulky and ponderous as befits a breeder of prize cattle, gathered his cabinet members and, draped in Palestinian keffiyehs, they hauled Israel to The Hague, to defend their pro-Hamas accusation of genocide.
That was a year ago. From there on the relationship between Pretoria and Washington soured by the month. Biden’s National Security Council spokesman opined that South Africa’s case at the ICJ was, “meritless, counter-productive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” The House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman quoted “core national interests” in urging Biden and his Secretary of State to intervene. They did so, but how exactly? By matter of fact and tactful statements – water off an African hippo’s back.
President Trump, never one for tactful statements, made an Executive Order on 7 February in his forthright, no-quarter-given manner. The very title bristled: “Addressing egregious actions of the Republic of South Africa.” Among the indictments a furious Trump flung at what could be the most antisemitic of all freely elected governments were,
“Aggressive positions towards the US and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the ICJ, and reinvigorating relations with Iran. The US cannot support under-mining US foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our nation, our allies, our African partners, our interests.”
Without ado Trump stopped US assistance and foreign aid valued at hundreds of millions to a country because its government did “bad things.” You like keeping company with regimes that wish us ill? No more money for you. Goodbye.
How can a third rate power with a broken economy pose a “national security threat” to America? On the face of things it cannot...Real enough though, South Africa is like a whining mosquito. It may no longer be the world’s premier gold and platinum producer, but retains a trove of crucial metals and minerals. Add to this a regime with a history of selling out to the first foreign bidder, we can understand Trump’s dreams disturbed by a button bleeping code red at his ambitions for Gaza and Iran most of all. His Executive Order, and the prospect of sanctions targeting government bigwigs, is a case of ‘better late than never.’ Tehran has already plucked this low lying fruit. Of a certainty, the Mullahs effectively paid South Africa’s government to drag Israel to The Hague. By getting the ICJ to rule on Israeli genocide in Gaza, the plan was to get a ‘restraining order’, a de facto cease fire that would give Hamas a breather to rebuild.
That is how far Nelson Mandela’s movement has fallen from grace. “The party that fought apartheid is now a patronage machine draped in revolutionary rhetoric,” as the Economist Magazine put it. “In a state where half of black South Africans are unemployed and where crime goes unpunished, it is grimly rational to kill to get a lucrative political job.”
As a rule, states in Africa don’t fail, they plummet. Three decades after the end of Apartheid and a succession of wrecking crews that “did bad things”. Ramaphosa the Prez oversees a gangster state. He himself is, pardon the cliché, bad news. The man is a traitor’s accomplice; when Vice President he looked over his President’s skulking shoulder while he sold the executive function to an Indian brotherhood. Today he presides over a failed state controlled by criminal syndicates from top to bottom. An ex president himself admits that people involved in treason remain members of the government. Presumably Ramaphosa was one of the traitors he had in mind. No surprise that under his watch South Africa has begun fragmenting, and besides, ticks every box for a failed state.
The long and the short of it is that black liberators from Apartheid inherited the economic hub of Africa but succumbed to self-grandeur and greed...And therefore got in with the wrong crowd. Party apparatchiks who thought up policies like expropriating land without paying for it and national health insurance, are on the lookout for tenders, property and kickbacks. Cherry-picked cadres do not want “renewal” or land reform, “they want deals”.
No surprise therefore that the government has allied the country with other Israel-hating failed states – after all, those two parts go together. Walter Russell Mead gives a tart lesson, in fact a practical application of the curse which gave poor Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng sleepless nights: “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.” Russell-Mead is attesting to a fact of life that, one way or another, dumb policy at home rubs off on dumb policy abroad.
President Trump, despite his Executive Order being met with a ‘go-for-it’ snub from bigwigs, media and leftwingers who had the chutzpah to chide the world’s most powerful man, and the world’s richest man, is on track to give the cesspool a good cleanout. The general public and business feel jittery as well they might. The fallout, diplomatic, economic and trade, won’t be pretty. But who shall mourn the collapse of an ANC-led government that has rotted from the head down.
There comes a time when a leader must be cruel in order to be kind. Failing which, like “Sleepy Joe” with his ‘pro-Israel’ antics, Trump will end up being kind to the cruel.
He must therefore lose no time targeting sanctions on this crippled mischief maker at the bottom of Africa. Israel will owe him a debt of gratitude. The long-suffering people of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ will owe him another one. Assets frozen and travel restricted on this, Iran’s black asset, will in quick time swat it off the Mullahs’ “ring of fire”.
And who shall mourn the demise that black bigots invited.
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.