By Abayomi Azikiwe
A veteran anti-apartheid organizer and later politician now turned diplomat, Ebrahim Rasool, has returned to the Republic of South Africa where people swarmed the airport in Cape Town to express their support for the envoy and what he represents in their historical trajectory.
Ambassador Rasool was accused of making statements which expressed a hatred for the United States and its President Donald Trump.
The leader of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa, has rejected these allegations along with others made by the Trump administration. There are false claims which suggest that the white minority in South Africa are being targeted for land seizures and mass killings. Some suggest that the Boer (Afrikaner) population suffer from genocide inflicted by the overwhelming African majority.
Rasool has refused to be cowed by the actions of the U.S. administration and after arriving in South Africa he stated that the expulsion would be worn as a “badge of honor.” President Ramaphosa has echoed this sentiment noting that the government and people of South Africa would not be intimidated by the administration in Washington, D.C.
The official statement issued by Rasool emphasizes:
“We can negotiate a lot, but we cannot negotiate away our case against genocide in the ICJ — imagine today, with the ceasefire ended by Israel, that SA did not have the case —what would hold Israel accountable and what hope would the Palestinians have? While we gratefully value our trade with the USA, imagine we withdrew from BRICS and dropped our non-alignment, and we were left with a USA that is unpredictable? We can transact many things, but the historical victims in SA of institutionalized racism, xenophobia, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and every other ism and phobia, we can never transact the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
After filing the case for the violations of the Genocide Convention by the zionist state, the U.S. under the previous administration of President Joe Biden rhetorically dismissed the lawsuit filed by South Africa as having no merit. This same hostility towards South African foreign policy towards the Palestine question and other issues in West Asia and North Africa which are at variance with Washington and Wall Street undergirds the worsening in relations.
There has been an historical pattern of deepening solidarity between the African National Congress (ANC) along with other liberation movements, parties, trade unions, religious leaders and mass organizations which are demonstrating against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The solidarity from the youth-led movement in support of Palestine in South Africa has fueled the posture of other governments throughout the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region as well as the entire African Union (AU).
Former President Nelson Mandela, the first head-of-state elected in a nonracial democratic election in 1994, noted that the liberation of South Africa would be incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. Consequently, it was not surprising that the Ramaphosa government would take the lead in bringing a case before the highest United Nations judicial institution, the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
After making arguments before the ICJ in late 2023 and early 2024, the court delivered a favorable ruling in saying that the claims brought by South Africa of violations of the Genocide Convention were plausible. Despite these developments, the U.S. and the settler-colonial zionist regime in Palestine ignored the ruling of the ICJ and continued their genocidal policies against the Palestinians and other states throughout the West Asia region.
Rasool emphasized that the foreign policy of South Africa must be consistent with certain principles derived from its own historical development. He went on to explain that:
“In 50 years of a complex and nuanced relationship with the USA, we must fight for the relationship, but not at the expense of our dignity because we will not be bullied. We must have an ambassador urgently in Washington, but not to confirm the idea that only a white ambassador devoid of our values can speak to a white president. We must export to the USA our cars, our fruit, and our critical minerals, but we must also export our integrity, our values, and our non-racialism. We must enter into trade negotiations with the USA, because our economy and our people need them. But we must never trade our sovereignty, lest we be told that China and Cuba cannot be our friends. Our friends are the mighty in the G20. But they are also the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the occupied, whether in Sudan or whether in Palestine. Withdrawing from the International Court of Justice is not an option until Palestine is free and Israel is accountable.”
Russia, China, BRICS and the Movement Towards a Multipolar World System
The disagreements between the current ANC-led Government of National Unity (GNU) and successive administrations in Washington extend beyond the Palestinian question. South Africa has refused to accept the U.S. policy towards the Russian Federation particularly involving the special military operation in Ukraine. Although Trump claims that his administration wants a ceasefire and a long-term solution to the fighting between Russia and the NATO-backed government in Ukraine, the real reasons behind the talks with Moscow are aimed at securing valuable natural resources in Ukraine. Nonetheless, the actual conditions of an effective ceasefire and peace agreement will inevitably impact the European Union (EU) states and the UK through the pressure to raise defense spending while cutting social welfare programs. While the administration promotes the notion that peace is approaching, it is deliberately agitating states within and outside the western alliance which emerged after World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist states in Eastern Europe. The aggressive tariff’s policy and threats to seize Greenland and Canada indicate a view aimed at the reconfiguration of U.S. dominance within several geopolitical regions throughout the world.
The People’s Republic of China has been clearly identified by U.S. imperialism as a strategic adversary. A renewed 21st century Cold War is directed against both Beijing and Moscow. The Brazil, Russian, India, China and South Africa plus (BRICS) Summits have generated tremendous interest in many geopolitical regions from South America and the Caribbean to Africa and Asia. South Africa served as the chair of the BRICS grouping during 2023. BRICS has been identified by the Trump administration for aggressive economic measures.
Working alongside BRICS is the New Development Bank (NDB) which is designed to provide alternative forms of financing for sustainable economic and infrastructural projects in the Global South. These objectives are essential in the current period when there is a sharp rise in international debt obligations for the African Union (AU) member-states and other developing countries and regions. At present the affiliates of BRICS+ represent 54% of the world’s population.
South Africa is the most industrialized state on the continent. Its population of 63 million has the potential to play an even greater role in the transformation of Africa. For these very reasons related to the Palestinian question and relations with Ukraine, Russia, China along with the rapid growth of BRIC+, U.S. imperialism is working to destabilize the government and society to deter the people from their contemporary role in domestic and international affairs.
AU and its People Must Defend South Africa
The history of the South African people has served as an inspiration to other oppressed nations throughout the continent and the world. The transformation of the apartheid system of settler-colonialism was a major victory for the people of South Africa, the entire SADC region and the oppressed and freedom-loving masses throughout the globe.
Therefore, the attempts by the U.S. to generate division and social chaos in South Africa or any other AU member-state should be responded to with maximum solidarity. As the world witnesses the exertion of genuine independence and sovereignty in many regions of the African continent, progressive and anti-imperialist forces are obligated to support the demands for the withdrawal of imperialist military bases and the renegotiation of economic agreements with mining firms and financial institutions.
President Ramaphosa was quoted recently as saying he is not in any hurry to replace Rasool as the ambassador to the U.S. He reflected on this recent diplomatic row within the context of the suspension of U.S. aid to South Africa saying:
“It is entirely within their own right. I mean, it is their own money. In many ways, it’s a wake-up call on our part as South Africans that we’ve got to find ways of being self-reliant, of relying on our own resources, and that is what our people expect, even within our fiscal constraints and challenges. So, this is a matter that we are discussing, and our sovereignty is important, and our sovereignty as a country should also mean that we must find ways all the time to look after the welfare of South Africans, with our own resources.”
These observations by Ramaphosa hold true for the rest of the AU continental region. Africa must utilize these attacks to build internal cooperation, unity and self-reliance.
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