South Africa wants the world to see it as the moral prosecutor of Israel. It should first explain why African migrants are again living in fear on South African streets.

The issue is no longer theoretical. Anti-immigrant groups have reportedly set June 30 as a deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave South Africa. Migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi and elsewhere have been displaced, shops have been looted, and people have been killed. President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned South Africans not to scapegoat migrants for unemployment, crime and failed public services, admitting that South Africa’s problems are, in the main, South Africa’s own problems. Reuters reported the warning in the context of recent xenophobic violence and South Africa’s economic distress.

That admission defeats the ANC’s distraction strategy.

South Africa’s crisis was not caused by Israel. It was not caused by Jews. It was not caused by America. It was not caused by Palestinians. It was not caused by Zimbabwean gardeners, Mozambican workers, Ghanaian shopkeepers or Nigerian students. South Africa’s crisis is the result of failed governance, ideological economics, corruption, collapsing local government, lawlessness, unemployment, criminal impunity and a ruling party that no longer knows how to govern without creating enemies.

The ANC’s strategy is typical of failing states: when citizens demand electricity, water, policing, jobs and accountable institutions, the regime offers them a foreign villain. When the poor ask why life is becoming unlivable, the state points outward. When governance fails, propaganda begins.

That is the role Israel plays in ANC politics.

The Hague as camouflage

South Africa brought its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice while insisting that its foreign policy was grounded in humanitarian principle. DIRCO’s own announcement states the position clearly. But a government that cannot protect Africans inside South Africa has no moral standing to perform humanitarian virtue at The Hague. If Pretoria cannot stop mobs from targeting migrants in Durban, Johannesburg, Gauteng or KwaZulu-Natal, its lectures about Israel should be read not as conscience, but as camouflage.

The camouflage is obvious because the foreign-policy pattern is no longer neutral. South Africa has moved into an anti-Western and Islamist-accommodating posture, most visibly in its treatment of Hamas. DIRCO confirmed that former foreign minister Naledi Pandor spoke by telephone with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh ten days after the October 7 massacre, while denying that she offered support for Hamas’s attack. South Africa later condemned the killing of Haniyeh in Tehran and expressed condolences “to the Haniyeh family as well as to the leadership and people of Palestine” — wording that avoided saying “Hamas leadership,” even though Haniyeh was Hamas’s political leader.

That is not non-alignment. It is selective alignment.

South Africa’s posture toward the United States has also deteriorated into open strategic hostility. Reuters reported that the United States expelled South Africa’s ambassador in 2025 amid worsening........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)