From Dreyfus to South Africa’s Iran embrace

“He never spoke about it,” Yaël Perl Ruiz told me quietly. “But at night, he would scream in his sleep.”

She was speaking of her great-grandfather, Alfred Dreyfus — the French Jewish army captain falsely accused of treason in 1894 in one of modern Europe’s most infamous antisemitic scandals. Dreyfus’s name was only cleared 12 years later, on 12 July 1906, a date now officially recognised by France as a national day of commemoration.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Yaël just after French President Emmanuel Macron made that announcement earlier this month. She spoke movingly of her mother, Simone, who had been 18 when Dreyfus died and remembered a quiet, affectionate grandfather haunted by nightmares. As a child, Yaël read his prison diary, Five Years of My Life, not realising at first that its author was her own relative. “After I knew, I was changed. My mother used to say, “Because of what happened to him, we didn’t have the right to complain about small things.”

There’s something in that stoicism — in how trauma becomes legacy — that lingers uncomfortably in the present. Because the past isn’t past. It echoes in the way we treat truth, race, and dissent today.

South Africa’s current diplomatic posture raises precisely these questions.

In 2023, South Africa abstained from a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning Iran’s violent crackdown on women-led protests. While the resolution – backed by 25 countries – called for a fact-finding mission into Tehran’s actions, South Africa was one of only six countries that abstained.

Since then, high-level engagements between South Africa and Iran have continued. In March 2024, the Iranian ambassador was hosted by ANC Deputy Secretary-General, Nomvula Mokonyane, and Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, Blade Nzimande, received Iran’s ambassador to discuss joint cooperation. Photographs were shared of both meetings, which included formal discussions around strengthening bilateral ties.

This, despite Iran being designated as a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States and widely condemned for supporting Hamas and other proxy groups across the Middle East. While South Africa maintains a “non-aligned” foreign policy, it has repeatedly emphasised the importance of strong diplomatic and economic ties with Washington. It’s fair to ask: do these engagements with Iran help or hinder that goal?

And now, a new question arises:

On 22 September 2023 — just 15 days before the Hamas attacks of October 7 — South Africa announced that it would grant visa-free entry to Palestinian passport holders. The decision allows Palestinians to enter South Africa for up to 90 days without obtaining a visa from a South African embassy.

This is not an accusation. It’s a question — one I am raising publicly for the first time in this blog. To date, the South African government has not explained why this visa exemption was announced at that particular moment. I have not yet posed this question directly to DIRCO, but I intend to. For now, I’m raising it here, openly, as part of a broader public conversation.

Was the decision routine? Symbolic? Strategic? Were parliamentary or national security consultations involved? Or was it simply an internal bureaucratic process with unfortunate timing?

Of course, governments don’t have to explain every visa decision. But when a move like this intersects with public safety, global terrorism, and potential foreign policy entanglements – and when it happens quietly, just days before a major attack – then yes, we have a right to ask why.

This does not imply conspiracy – it calls for clarity.

Accountability is not an attack.

In my first blog for the TOI, I raised concerns based on documents shared with me alleging that certain South African officials may have had foreknowledge of the 7 October attacks and played a role in facilitating legal access for Hamas. I explicitly stated that the claims were unverified and formed part of a lobbying initiative. Within 48 hours, I published a further clarification.

Rather than address the content, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) responded with an open letter in a South African newspaper that did not refute a single factual point, but instead launched a personal attack on me as a journalist.

I will be following up on the question of the visa exemption and the broader South Africa–Iran relationship in future reporting. If DIRCO or any other branch of government wishes to provide a response or clarification, they are welcome to do so.

But the core issue remains.

When governments form quiet alliances with extremist regimes, when they fail to explain decisions that affect public safety and foreign policy, and when they meet questions with intimidation – we should all be concerned.

The legacy of Dreyfus isn’t only about antisemitism. It’s about what happens when a state declares itself immune from scrutiny – when truth is treated as provocation, and asking questions becomes a punishable act.