How ANC’s Iran alliance exposes a dangerous foreign policy gamble: Ilan Preskovsky
Key topics:
SANDF chief pledged support to Iran, sparking global outrage
ANC’s Iran ties strain US relations, risking trade and diplomacy
Coalition partners sidelined as ANC dominates foreign policy
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.
By Ilan Preskovsky*
At this point, we probably shouldn’t be remotely surprised by either the ANC’s incompetence or its utterly wrong-headed approach to foreign policy, but just when you thought members of our leading party couldn’t sink any lower, they do just that.
Last month, South African National Defence Force chief, General Rudzani Maphwanya, met with several high-ranking military officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including defence minister, Major General Aziz Nasizadeh, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, and Iranian commander-in-chief of the Iranian army, General Amir Hatami. That he should take meetings at all with such figures is repellent enough, but what was said during these meetings are almost too insane to believe.
In a move that sent even DIRCO and the ANC into a tailspin, Maphwanya pledged unqualified “political and military support” to the Islamic Republic and, according to the Tehran Times, happily accepted Hatami’s stance that South Africa and Iran share the common goals of “fighting global arrogance and aggressive colonial approaches” by replying, without a trace of irony, that the Islamic Republic and South Africa share the common goals of always standing alongside “the oppressed and defenceless people of the world”.
Let’s take a step back while that sets in...
Selling a Nation’s Soul to the Devil
Contrary to what some on the far-left may believe, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not something that anyone in their right mind would have anything to do with – let alone pledge political or military support. It is a radical Islamist theocracy that is the biggest state sponsor of terror in the world and the sworn enemy of the West. It’s a country where the mantra of “death to America, death to Israel” is effectively its pledge of allegiance and its citizens are routinely arrested, tortured and murdered for daring to speak out against the ruling regime or for not being entirely observant in their practice of the Islamic Republic’s fundamentalist version of Sharia law. The Islamic Republic is, almost without question, the biggest external threat to democracy on the world stage and has stood out as one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet for nearing forty years.
Read more:
The ANC’s close ties with the Islamic Republic may have made sense when it was a revolutionary force that relied on the backing of other revolutionary forces, but as the head party in the coalition government of a liberal-democratic country, founded on one of the most progressive and inclusive constitutions in the world, it is an increasingly catastrophic liability.
South Africa’s relationship with the rest of the liberal-democratic world outside of perhaps the few liberal-democratic member states of BRICS has been deteriorating for years, but its increasingly sour relationship with the United States of America is especially concerning. Not only we do as a country need good US trade relations, our values, culture and commitment to democracy have far more in common with the US – yes, even under Trump – than with totalitarian regimes like the Islamic Republic or Putin’s Russia.
And yet, President Ramaphosa, the Department of International Relations and Co-Operation (DIRCO), and now, apparently, the South African military, seem intent on doing everything they can to undermine this key relationship.
Diplomatic Blunder After Diplomatic Blunder
Of course, we can’t overlook the Donald-Trump-shaped elephant in the room. His ludicrous claims of white genocide and his general contempt for all African countries does make forging a meaningful diplomatic relationship with his White House even more of a challenge. But, first, whatever you might think of The Donald and his anarchic approach to politics, South Africa’s ever-increasingly close ties with the enemies of the free world has alienated both sides of the political spectrum in the USA. And second, the fact that Trump is such a loose cannon means that South African leadership need to be especially deft in their dealing with him.
This, apparently, was far too much to ask.
The ANC, of course, started off on the wrong foot immediately with Trump with its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Even if you agree with the court case alleging Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, it’s impossible to deny just how much it damaged SA-US relations as it inevitably ended up roping the United States into its allegations of genocide. Especially as it affirmed so much of what the West already feared about the ANC: that it supports and is supported by the enemies of the United States.
So, of course, with all this at stake, Ramaphosa kicked off Trump’s second term with the utterly bewildering decision to appoint as South Africa’s ambassador to the White House an unabashed Trump-hater and alleged Islamist sympathiser: Ibrahim Rasool. This went about as well as you’d expect and Ambassador Rasool barely lasted long enough in that position to recover from his jet lag. And things hardly got better from there.
We are already starting to feel the material ramifications of this in Trump’s punitive tariffs against South Africa, but it’s hard to imagine that things aren’t going to get even worse as the ANC has dragged South Africa’s moral standing on the international stage through the proverbial mud with its not just cordial, but outright friendly, ties with the Islamic Republic and other rogue states. And that moral standing may have just hit a new nadir last week.
What It Means
Obviously, on a practical level, South Africa’s military is in something of a state of decrepitude and probably won’t be of much use to the Islamic Republic in any real way. But on a symbolic level, what Maphwanya effectively did was lend his and South Africa’s full support to the Islamist regime’s war on the West. He made it clear that in a war between theocratic totalitarianism and liberal-democracy, he and his governing party would stand with the former.
I suppose the ANC would like us to take some comfort that it immediately distanced itself from Maphwanya by saying he was acting completely alone and without the support of the government, but let’s be real: at very best, this shows that the ANC is even more of an incompetent shambles than most of us already believe it to be, and at worst, that the ANC’s worry here is that Maphwanya said the quiet part out loud, not that they disagreed with what he said – which is, after all, very much in line with its existing foreign policy.
At this point, though, the ANC is the ANC and expecting it to act differently is an exercise in futility. What is, I think, overlooked is how this reflects an even greater crisis within the government of national unity. Why, when virtually every other department in government is balanced between the different parties in the coalition, does DIRCO seem to be owned completely and utterly by the ANC? Why, when something like this happens, is the best that the DA can do is call for a court martial of Maphwanya after the fact? Why is it that when it comes to foreign policy, the other parties in the governing coalition act less like co-leaders than the opposition; raging at the machine only from the outside?
It’s true, foreign policy is traditionally set by the president, so it’s hardly surprising that the leadership of DIRCO are all ANC members. But it’s a massive flaw in this so-called government of national unity that the ANC – with its outdated, often destructive Cold War alliances - is in sole control of South Africa’s international relations. Coalition governance is clearly always tricky to pull off (ironically, just ask Israel) and the GNU has faced more than its share of strain, but for it to work, it can’t be hamstrung by a rogue department that is all but a law unto itself. Especially not when that department sets the tone for South Africa’s place on the world stage.
It’s long past time for the other parties in the GNU to demand a place within DIRCO and for the ANC’s monopoly on foreign relations to come to an end.
*By Ilan Preskovsky: Freelance journalist/ writer