Why Sooliman doesn’t belong at the heart of the National Dialogue: Ilan Preskovsky

Key topics:Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman’s controversial role in national dialogue forumAlleged ties between Gift of the Givers and Islamist-linked organisationsConcerns over Sooliman's political influence and foreign affiliations.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Ilan Preskovsky*.In his last State of the Union, President Ramaphosa announced the formation of a “National Dialogue”. A strange name for an initiative, as the phrase “national dialogue” usually evokes images of South Africans gathering together to complain about the ANC, but in this case, the idea was to create a forum of thirty-or-so South African thought leaders from all walks of life that will meet mid-August to brainstorm ideas on how to “fix” the many issues facing South Africa today. Cynically, and not incorrectly, this could easily be written off as the ANC, once again, outsourcing its responsibilities – and by extension, it’s blame – to someone else, but honestly, considering how it has been private individuals and companies that have been carrying the slack for our increasingly hopeless leaders for years, it’s probably not a terrible idea.What may be a terrible idea, though, is who the president decided to appoint as one of the “eminent persons” of the conference, which is due to be held on 15 August: Dr. Imtiaz Sooliman, the founder and head of Gift of the Givers. I know. But before getting into why Dr Sooliman may be a worrying choice to play a large part of this initiative (there seems to be conflicting reports about whether he is co-chairing it, but he is at least a significant element of it), I’m fully aware that I am jumping head-first into shark infested waters with bits of bloody steak sticking out of my pockets. Sooliman is an extremely well respected individual in this country and Gift of the Givers is about as beloved as institutions get, and not without good reason. Criticising either Sooliman or his organisation that has done so much to provide disaster relief worldwide is tricky, but all the more so when it is all but guaranteed to be written off as a “Zionist smear campaign” to discredit someone who has never been shy about his hatred towards Israel and Zionism. But to reiterate what I said when I last broached the subject, pointing out concerns with Sooliman and/or Gift of the Givers no more discredits all the good that has been done in their name than acknowledging that good erases any wrongs. And though it would be a stretch to say there is any one smoking gun that would prove beyond a doubt that Sooliman and his NPO have been pursuing nefarious ends, this is no baseless conspiracy theory, but one based on a clear-eyed view of Sooliman and his associations..A List of Wrongs. In a previous article, based on the findings presented in an open letter on the Times of Israel by attorney and former chairman of the Jewish Board of Deputies, Lawrence Nowosenetz, I outlined several very specific concerns with how Gift of the Givers operates, how it is associated with various Islamic charities that have been used as fronts for funding terror, and how its founder and head continuously spouts views that are the antithesis of what a liberal democracy like South Africa is supposed to stand for. I broke down the close association between Gift of the Givers and the umbrella charity Union of Good, which has been sanctioned by the US for funnelling funds to radical Islamist groups like Hamas, and a new version of which launched in South Africa under the direction of one Imtiaz Sooliman. I spoke of how Gift of the Givers created hospitals in Gaza that have been used as military bases by Hamas, while also handing out untraceable cash to undisclosed operatives in Gaza. I also took a deep dive into Sooliman himself; how he was greatly influenced by Jihadi thinkers like Sheik Yusuf al Qaradawi, how he has publicly stated that he cares only about Sharia law and boasted about breaking secular laws on numerous occasions. That he has openly stood with Hamas against Israel and has been instrumental in pushing the ANC in its court case against the Jewish state at the International Court of Justice, almost goes without saying. These allegations against Sooliman and Gift of the Givers have appeared on several different platforms, and his response to all of them has been very telling. He denied any malfeasance, of course, on the part of Gift of the Givers, but crucially, he failed to distance himself from either his inflammatory rhetoric or his Islamist associations, and doubled down on his hatred of Israel and mistrust of Zionists. He then released the following statement: “Gift of the Givers would like to thank lawyer Lawrence, Times of Israel, Feinberg and the SA Jewish Report, Alec, Marika, Biznews, and farmer Willem for the incredible escalation in our profile both locally and internationally on platforms we didn’t even know existed. This has resulted in a flood of current and new donors wanting to support our various causes. You have benefited the Palestinian cause immensely." Cute, but as near as I can tell, Gift of the Givers has not undergone an external forensic audit since these allegations first came out and Sooliman has not been held to account for, well, anything. Indeed, according to a recent report, over the past twelve months, Sooliman has gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that he is more untouchable than ever by increasingly entrenching himself in South Africa’s media and political institutions.As the report puts it, “Over the past twelve months, Sooliman has significantly accelerated his effort to personally embed himself within the top echelons of South African media. These engagements are notably not incidental; they are targeted acts of soft influence, timed with geopolitical developments, and executed with a precision more familiar to intelligence operatives than to charity administrator.Charity With Political Clout. This is something that has been conspicuous about Sooliman from the start: he has frequently blurred the lines between political actor and philanthropist, and rather than allowing the often incredible work done by his organisation to speak for itself, his influence on setting the, well, national discourse, has been pretty unrelenting. Sooliman first arrived on the scene not as a philanthropist, but as a politician - in particular, as one of the founders of the African Muslim Party. The AMP, with its platform drawn from Sharia law, was never more than a fringe political party that won zero seats in the 1994 election and since then had only fractionally better success in the Western Cape. But Sooliman has been playing politics ever since, albeit with an almost singular obsession with demonizing Israel.Sooliman has also seldom had a larger profile than the past year – and especially since the allegations against him were first raised. In particular, he has publicly met with the publishers, editors, and staff members of some of South Africa’s major media houses; has become increasingly involved with the South African Police Service; and has been in ever closer contact with political actors from Turkey and Qatar. These aren’t just strange activities for the head of a disaster relief organisation to engage in, especially so publicly, but point towards something genuinely worrying.His rapid succession of direct and (after the public photo ops) closed-door meetings with South Africa’s mainstream media points less towards the usual sort of media relations employed by an NPO – public press releases and advertising, usually handled by the NPO’s marketing manager rather than its CEO – than towards a concerted effort to mould the narrative around him. His ingratiation with SAPS, though, is even more bizarre as it has less than nothing to do with the work in which he or his organisation are involved. And again, why so publicly? It’s hard to see this as anything but a display of his influence; perhaps even of his impunity and power. Presenting himself as someone with seemingly unlimited access to the highest levels of both the media and the police at the very least demolishes the idea of his being an apolitical philanthropist, but may point towards someone who desperately needs to control the entire narrative around him.Which, inevitably, brings us to his engagement and close relationships with political representatives from Qatar and Turkey. Obviously, some engagement with Middle Eastern countries is entirely appropriate for the head of a humanitarian organisation that works extensively in these areas, but that it’s these two countries, in particular, is significant. As is the fact that his engagement with them rivals and surpasses that of South Africa’s official diplomatic representatives. Turkey, under the dictatorial leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been moving steadily away from its Western affiliations in past years and aligning itself more firmly with the region’s more hard-line, anti-Western Islamist movements; chief among them the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar, meanwhile, has become one of the most important and most dangerous players on the world stage. The country itself is infamous for its shocking human rights record – it has a large underclass of actual, bonafide slaves – and its own close association with the Muslim Brotherhood and its most notorious offshoot, Hamas. But because it is extremely wealthy, it has been exerting an ever increasing influence on the West, pouring billions of dollars into Western governments, institutions and education establishments. Just recently, and most visibly, President Donald Trump was rightly criticised for accepting a 400 million dollar aeroplane from the Qataris. If this anti-Western, anti-democratic, totalitarian Islamist dictatorship that employs actual slaves can exerts this much power on the United States, just imagine what it could do to a vulnerable liberal democracy like South Africa. And then imagine just why someone who has openly shown disdain for secular law and has a seething, seemingly bottomless hatred for the State of Israel, might find himself as South Africa’s unofficial point man for Qatar and Turke.Impunity, Immunity and Doubt. No doubt, Sooliman and his supporters will brush all of this off as mere co-incidence, at best, a conspiratorial smear campaign, at worst. He would also once again insist that these claims be taken to the appropriate authorities. Whatever else you might say about him, Imtiaz Sooliman is no one’s fool. He has always been very careful to play things just on the right side of a reasonable doubt; leaving plenty of smoke but precious little fire. And in case anyone does happen to notices just how much smoke there is around him, and starts to put 2 and 2 together, he has been very sure to make himself virtually untouchable. But just because Sooliman has assured that these allegations against him are never quite solid enough to stand up in court and has cultivated relationships with just the right people to ensure that they don’t stand up in the court of public opinion either, doesn’t mean that he should be representing a forum dedicated to mapping the future of South Africa..*Ilan Preskovsky: Freelance journalist/ writer

Why Sooliman doesn’t belong at the heart of the National Dialogue: Ilan Preskovsky

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