My Take | Who’s afraid of China? Not Africa
- Continent’s leaders are pushing back against Western pressure and tilt increasingly towards Beijing
A bill currently coursing through the US House of Representatives is about as disgraceful as it gets when it comes to human decency.
While it accuses South Africa of posing a potential threat to America’s national security, its real aim is to punish the country for bringing genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice. It accuses the South African government of being antisemitic and anti-Israel.
In an eloquent piece in the Financial Times from last week, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor wrote: “The proposed bill, now in the House of Representatives, makes the claim that ‘the South African government has a history of siding with malign actors’ and will consider whether South Africa ‘has engaged in activities that undermine US national security or foreign policy interests’.
“It criticises us for taking Israel to the International Court of Justice, where we argued that the actions of the Israeli military in Gaza violate international law and the Geneva Convention. In its ruling on provisional measures, the ICJ found ‘plausible’ evidence that Israel was conducting a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. It would be devastating to our mutual economic interests if the bill were to collapse bilateral relations.”
She warned that “seeking to bring South Africa to its knees almost amounts to self-sabotage for the US”.
Being the biggest economy on the continent and one of its most influential international players, treating South Africa as a hostile country will indeed sabotage Washington’s attempt, dismal though it has been, to re-establish ties with the continent to counter expanding Chinese influence.
