Is South Africa the Latest Paid Iranian Proxy State?
Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, Lebanon, Syria and now …….South Africa? Has South Africa now joined the Iranian sponsored axis of “resistance” designed to bring down first Israel followed by the other Western democracies?
Rebecca Davis in a January 25, 2024 article in the excellent South African online newspaper Daily Maverick, asks whether Iran paid the African National Congress (ANC, the corrupt governing party) to file a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ.)
She writes: “The allegation is essentially: The ANC, which for years has been teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, announced in early January that it had managed to stabilise its finances. It didn’t really give any specifics on how this had been accomplished.
In the same week, South Africa approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague to ask that Israel’s actions in Gaza be classified as genocide.
To some people, the timing of these two events is suspicious.”
The claim is that Iran paid South Africa a huge sum to take Israel to the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide.
The timing of events not only gives rise to suspicion but cries out for explanation. From October 22 to 23, 2023 the South African cabinet minister, G.N.M. Pandor was in Iran meeting its then president, ( “Butcher of Tehran”) Ayatollah Raisi and its foreign affairs minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the pair of whom would later be “martyred” in a May 19th helicopter crash.
South Africa filed its ICJ claim on December 29, 2023. On January 8, 2024 the ANC’s treasurer general told reporters: “…we have been able to stabilize our finances.”
Other reporters claim the party was so broke that on December 4, 2023 the Sheriff showed up with a moving van at ANC party headquarters pursuant to a writ of seizure and sale granted by the court to seize its office furniture, laptops and printers, sell them at public auction and apply the proceeds to a judgement an election poster and banner company had obtained against it for a debt of R102,465 plus interest and costs owing since 2019. The Sheriff was unable to execute the writ because the people inside locked the doors and refused to let him in. The creditor vowed to get a court order authorizing the Sheriff to break the locks and obtained a third writ, this one in excess of R150,000 ( to account for accumulated interest.)
ANC employees accused it of pocketing statutory deductions from their salaries instead of paying it to the relevant ministries which they only found out when they made claims for government benefits they thought they were entitled to.
But then South Africa filed its case against Israel on December 29, 2023 and, all of a sudden, the party found the money to settle its debt to the poster company.
And on February 24, 2024 it had the money to bus supporters from all over the country to a rally launching its 2024 election drive and ANC leaders likely could go back to going out for lunches starting with chilled roasted heirloom tomato and fresh basil soup with a dollop of creme fraiche on top instead of eating out of tins at their desks.
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Despite abundant natural riches and 34 years of post Apartheid opportunity to build prosperity, South Africa decayed into a failed state.
It has by far the highest rate of unemployment in the world-even higher than The West Bank and Gaza-according to The World Bank. In 2022 the International Labour Organization put its labour underutilization at 42% of the population Statistics on unemployment and labour underutilization – ILOSTAT.
The percentage of unemployed 15-24 year olds is estimated to be over 70%.
For two decades the country has been unable to supply continuing power and subjects its citizens to planned rolling blackouts leaving them without power for up to ten hours a day. ( Can you imagine being in the middle of rewatching for the tenth time the episode of Frasier in which Frasier and Niles open a French restaurant and the screen goes dark just as the kitchen staff flee en masse at the news that the director of the immigration service has reserved a table?)
Rape is a sure sign of a collapsed society and it is not surprising that South Africa also had the highest rate of rape in the world in 2010. One in four men having admitted to committing rape according to a 2009 survey done by the South African Medical Research Council Rape Statistics by Country 2024 (worldpopulationreview.com)
One would think that South Africa would have more urgent priorities than taking Israel to the ICJ on trumped up genocide charges. This again lends credence to speculation that South Africa has sold its foreign policy to Iran.
Davis writes that until the ANC opens its books to public scrutiny it will be impossible to verify the accusation that South Africa was paid to do Iran’s bidding.
Israel should have alleged a pay off at the ICJ and asked the court to order South Africa to allow independent, foreign forensic auditors access unfetterd to the ANC’s financial records (to the extent there are any. I expect they don’t type everything up in triplicate) and to its bank statements.
This would be legally relevant and there is still time to do it.
ANC and Republic of South Africa are a distinction without a meaningful difference. If South Africa’s corrupt, financially insolvent, governing party was paid by Iran to have South Africa bring this case against Israel it constitutes the common law legal tort of champerty which amounts to unlawfully paying for or otherwise supporting a suit in consideration of a bargain to receive, by way of reward, part of anything that may be gained as a result of the proceedings or some other benefit.
Iran, dedicated to Israel’s destruction, and bank roller of Hamas terror, would certainly benefit if the ICJ were to ( incorrectly, of course) find that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. It has just ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive (and, presumably, to simply abandon the hostages held there by Hamas.)
If the pay off took place it not only highlights the general perversion of the machinery of world governance when it comes to Israel but would constitute an abuse of the process of the ICJ and should provide grounds for staying the case.
Investigations of proxy statism should be conducted with respect to Mexico and Chile that referred Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC). To call Mexico an Iranian proxy state is to raise the question of whether a narco state should properly be called a state at all. By narco state is meant not the country with the most illegal drugs -the US would probably take that title-but a state whose drug cartels control its government.
Just on April 25th Mexico’s president praised the cartels as essentially “respectful people” who “respect the citizenry” and mostly just kill each other. On February 21 a Brooklyn jury found Garcia Luna guilty of accepting millions in bribes from a drug cartel and conspiring to commit various drug crimes while he was Secretary of Public Security.
The ICJ and ICI will find themselves with as much credibility as the UN if they become a kangaroo courts and unwitting tools of state sponsors of terrorism and their bribed proxies.
The real question is: would they even care?