President Cyril Ramaphosa has begun to channel what might be his inner Thabo Mbeki in the wake of SA’s successful challenge to Israel’s war in Gaza. At the end of a two-day ANC meeting this week he warned that in the wake of the SA case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague last week some of Israel’s allies might seek “regime change” here in revenge.
“We are aware there will be systematic fightback campaigns and I say this so that we are aware of it,” he intoned. “There will be no doubt that these forces will do anything in their power to prevent SA from concluding their case on the merits of the matter. The fightback may focus on our domestic politics and our electoral outcomes in order to pursue a regime change agenda.”
Good grief, what’s Cyril smoking now? Mbeki used to refer to “some among us” when he had an accusation to make but didn’t want to name names. At least his accusations were so obtuse it was impossible to guess who he might be talking about, if indeed anyone. In Ramaphosa’s case the lucidity is not quite up to Mbeki levels and he clearly means the Americans, Israel’s most ardent diplomatic supporter and its main source of weapons being used to prosecute the occupation of Gaza.
I knew from the word go Ramaphosa that would use the Gaza war and SA’s partially successful Israeli genocide accusation to try to gather support from left-wing intellectuals and other communities that have been abandoning the ANC ahead of the coming election. He is not good at this stuff, but I never imagined how crude the attempt would be.
So the Americans are going to try to unseat the ANC in the next few months? The same Americans on whom we spent a fortune in 2023 to convince them to keep us in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), their preferential Africa trade regime? The same Americans we hosted here for an Agoa summit weeks after the Israeli bombardment started? The same Americans who are our biggest single export market for sophisticated manufactured goods? Those Americans?
And if not the Americans, who? The British? The French? Jeez, maybe he means the local opposition. According to the polls, more than half his own country wants to see the back of Ramaphosa and his absolutely useless, meretricious government.
What we have here is a failure to lead. Having won a tangible international legal victory, Ramaphosa is entitled to preen a little, however little attention the Israelis may immediately be paying it. What he is not entitled to do is to leave a large SA Jewish community wondering whether it still has a place in the country. Jews have made an indelible positive contribution to SA in politics, the arts and literature, business, sport, science, medicine and technology. As a community and as individuals, Jews are a vital part of the SA heartbeat.
Those South African Jews who want to are entitled to support or sympathise with Israel, just as others citizens might want to support Hamas or its sponsor, Iran. It is Ramaphosa’s job to protect the rights and security of both, and he clearly isn’t. It took days for the government to even comment on the terrorist outrage committed by Hamas inside Israel on October 7. When Israel dared retaliate we pulled our entire diplomatic presence out of the country. So now there is no leverage on the ground at all. Really smart.
Ramaphosa allowed government officials to bully a clearly weak-kneed Cricket SA (CSA) into removing David Teeger as captain of the Proteas U19 team just ahead of the start of an international competition here. The CSA doesn’t get enough credit for making Teeger captain in the first place, but its treatment of him since has been appalling. There’s also talk of protesting at cruise liner terminals when they dock with passengers from the countries in Ramaphosa’s little black book.
Old wounds
Clearly the war in Gaza has opened old ideological, cultural and religious wounds in SA. We are a very damaged society at the best of times, which is why leadership matters. Sadly Ramaphosa, like his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, appears to be choosing division instead.
Former US president George W Bush used to say that in elections you could fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time. The latter were the ones you needed to concentrate on.
Since Ramaphosa became president real unemployment (including people who have given up looking for a job) has risen from 36.3% to 41.2%, the number of jobless adults has risen by 2.8-million people, and GDP per capita has fallen from $6,680 to $6,190. Passenger rail trips are down to 5-million from 27-million a month, the volume of electricity distributed is down 11% and gross debt has risen to nearly 71% from 49%.
I’m indebted to an old colleague, Nick Hedley, for those numbers, and reading them you can understand just how valuable, politically, the Gaza court victory becomes to the president and the ANC. That’s politics for you. It is just a pity that until the election is done, South African Jews will feel that they are pretty much on their own.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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