South Africa has steadfastly assumed the unique role of being the new global advocate of a rules-based international governance system. By courageously confronting apartheid wherever it rears its head in the world, South Africa has emerged as a beacon of hope on matters of racism, equality, decoloniality and the respect, promotion, protection and fulfilment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The conduct of its struggle for freedom and equality culminated in a constitutional order the human-rights thrust of which dictates its international relations and co-operation, and which has pitted it against powerful forces whose geopolitical interests have a troubling relationship with freedom and equality for all of humanity.
Inarguably, South Africa is now a force to be reckoned with in the use of international institutions of global justice and peace to advance its national interests. Having been the protagonist and beneficiary of the UN International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, it amassed the moral power to speak on matters concerning human freedoms and equality. Read with the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the apartheid-as-a-crime convention has made it difficult for land dispossession at levels of 19th-century colonisation to go unchallenged in the global chambers of justice.
The potential end of South Africa's influence as a moral force to stand against any state involved in apartheid and genocide is acknowledged. While the new design for a sustainable and enduring “structure of anti-apartheid and genocide consensus” may be vague in outlining it, the potential impact of this plan is a matter of great interest. Clearly, the future's blueprint draws inspiration from history and its implementation could shape the course of international relations.
As the Cold War, which became the proxy platform obligating those on the opposite ends of the war to champion freedom and equality, ended, the world started showing signs of incipient political frailty. This was exemplified by the crisis of new land dispossession and encroachments driven by a search for mineral resources and lebensraum in other contexts.
The tightness of the ICC's rulings with global justice leaves little to no opportunity to appeal apartheid and genocide. This has created a new community of friends to antagonise friends of global freedom and equality for all of humankind movement.
The more South Africa projects or uses the power to liquidate global apartheid racism and genocide, and there are consequences for its use, the more having such power breeds resentment, resistance and eventually a need for its balancing. What better way to start the power liquidation or balancing process than manufacturing racism narratives out of restitution and affirmative action programmes to establish conditions of freedom and equality? The latest strategy to nuance transformation, and in the case of the Expropriation Act, development planning logic, as aspects of the new racial character of South Africa was mischievous and, at worst, propagandist.
The context that ensured the growth and dominance of the pursuit of freedom and equality as conditional to peace and stability has since lost lustre as a global discourse. The rise of the pentagonal system of international relations, where opportunities to project hard power and its associated deterrents such as sanctions and trade wars, has put human rights in the back seat as national security interests take the front seat. The consolidation of transactional democracy around the person of US President Donald Trump and what his presidency represents, especially about the Middle East, is being manipulated to brazenly undermine the spirit undergirding the pursuit of global justice by South Africa.
In an earlier rendition, we wrote: “The hegemonic victory character of the ICJ case has, in real terms, subjected South Africa, and the ANC in particular, to a storm of heightened (friends of Israel) investment strikes, sophisticated regime change funding of its political adversaries and a cocktail of interdependent decisions by the global Israeli lobby to supercharge the neutralisation of South Africa as an emerging existential threat to the moral legitimacy of the State of Israel's occupation ambitions of Palestinian territory.”
It has gradually become impossible to reconcile the occupation aspirations of any country in the world with South Africa's constitutional ideals, which form the foundation of its international relations and co-operation stance. The idea of SA's “freedom and equality for all of humanity” significantly shapes how it interacts with other countries, even those with an unusual trade deficit. The alliance of Israel and the US has undoubtedly altered the US’s relations with South Africa and created a new lens through which South Africa's moral power is viewed and interpreted. The tightness of the ICC's rulings with global justice leaves little to no opportunity to appeal apartheid and genocide. This has created a new community of friends to antagonise friends of global freedom and equality for all of humankind movement. There is a surge of occupation and annexation movements, including those that advocate for accepting past injustice as the status quo.
The sting of economic sanctions against those the ICC has ruled against is real. At the rate the new global oligarchs are responding, this might well spill to several individuals whose support or collusion with apartheid and genocide might be included. The discontent against the South African ICC case against Israel and, by default, global apartheid and genocide is real. The issuing of arrest warrants on Israeli leaders by the ICC has changed the occupation of Gaza and other Palestinian issues into matters of global justice. The redefinition of Israeli activities in occupied Palestine as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes has reconfigured how the world sees the Palestinian issue.
The response of countries that consider themselves powerful to the soft and yet impactful power of multilateral governance institutions is often related to how and where the issues are on the national security interest grid. How these countries, particularly the US, respond is not random. The response is always part of an organised national security interest management system of values, attitudes, beliefs and meanings that are related to each other and the instructing context. The selective perception of who is a threat to US national security interests, its stereotypical expectations of our enemy should your enemy you be our friend, its inaccurate attributions of freedom and equality expectations of other sovereign environments and its national security cultural programming have led to the US's misjudgements whose consequences have destroyed many economies.
Equally, South Africa's non-West and anti-West posture, which dominates its non-alignment international relations and co-operation, has had the effect of being antagonistic to US national security interests. The brute truth is that in international relations, virtually all decisions have a national security interest component, sensible or otherwise, because some countries must benefit, and others should not.
The developing antagonism between the US and South Africa, before Trump and Musk, is an outcome of diplomatic decisions South Africa made on matters the US considers a security risk for America and its allies. The predominance of the Israeli lobby on US foreign policy instructs its attitude towards those Israel considers threats to its national security. South Africa is, in Israel, considered a friend of Hamas and, by default, an enemy of Israel; on the other hand, South Africa declares that its freedom is incomplete unless the liberation of Palestine is complete. This is the cocktail within which the US discontent about the ICC is so real.
• Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is a public policy specialist and the founder of The Thinc Foundation.
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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