Somaliland Rises while South Africa Declines

Israel’s historic recognition of Somaliland as an independent sovereign state on December 26, 2025—the first by any UN member—demonstrates profound strategic foresight. Signed as a mutual declaration with Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi establishing full diplomatic relations in the spirit of the Abraham Accords, this agreement extends cooperation in agriculture, health, technology, economy, and counter-terrorism. It secures a democratic partner in the Horn of Africa, leveraging Berbera Port’s critical position at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to counter Houthi threats and Iranian proxies.

Somaliland’s de facto sovereignty since 1991—following the genocidal regime of Siad Barre, which slaughtered 50,000–200,000 Isaaq civilians with aid from figures like the father of US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a colonel in Barre’s army—fully meets the Montevideo Convention criteria: defined territory based on 1960 colonial borders, permanent population, effective government, and capacity for international relations. Somaliland has sustained democratic elections since 1991, stable governance without international aid, and trade hubs like Berbera, extending the Abraham Accords frameworks to the Horn. Ethiopia’s immediate follow-through on the 2024 memorandum of understanding for sea access secures Red Sea routes, thwarting Iranian-backed threats and underscoring Israel’s visionary counter to regional revanchist forces.

In contrast, South Africa’s foreign policy channels anti-Western aggression, aligning Pretoria with Iran, Russia, and China—regimes facing existential collapse. Iran, the ANC’s primary paymaster, is imploding under fiscal exhaustion, demographic unrest, and regional overreach, sponsoring proxy terrorism while funding South Africa’s anti-Israel campaigns at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Iranian Rial depreciated by 99.99% from 70 to the dollar in 1979—when the Shah departed amid Islamist takeover—to approximately 1,450,000 to the dollar by December 2025, as Tehran’s isolation and corruption stripped economic viability, halving per capita income in real terms while inflation exceeded 40% annually, forcing regime change demands from a starved populace.

South Africa remains a vibrant democracy, with the ANC’s support continuing to decline—from around 40% in the 2024 national elections to figures in the low-to-mid 30s in many 2025 polls—clear evidence that voters are increasingly rejecting the party’s prioritization of controversial foreign policy alignments over the basic needs of the population. No major foreign policy decision in South Africa can be made without the ANC taking direction from its paymasters in Iran.

Israel’s enemies, including the ANC, often default to an anti-Israel stance driven by hate and spite rather than logic or fair-minded analysis. Their ideology of lies and hatred has blinded them to facts and reason, to the point where they facilitate bad actors and allow crimes against their own populations. The ANC’s conduct toward the South African people has been so egregious that a safe rule of thumb emerges: taking the 100% opposite position to the ANC, Maduro, or the Mullahs is reliably what is best for those countries and their people—their decision-making compass is utterly broken.

Several countries are reportedly considering following Israel’s lead in recognizing Somaliland, once again exposing South Africa—and the ANC in particular—for having stubbornly taken the wrong position on yet another critical international issue. The ANC is a failed party leading a failed government, actively destroying a once-prosperous country. The people of South Africa deserve far better, just as the long-suffering people of Iran and Venezuela deserve better than the regimes that have ruined their nations. This mirrors the destructive trajectory Iran itself now faces.

The ANC’s governance model offers a master class in national plunder, hollowing out institutions through corruption—such as ESKOM’s R1 billion monthly losses due to graft—while extracting taxes from a shrinking minority, predominantly white taxpayers, and communal lands to fund elite enrichment rather than public services. This has perpetuated extreme poverty rates exceeding 60% in former Bantustan regions like KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, mirroring the destructive paths of allied despots. Such choices accelerate domestic fractures, with the Western Cape pushing for secession to escape the central government’s terminal decline—movements that merit endorsement for orderly salvage of viable regions from ANC ruin.

Somaliland rejects Mogadishu’s irredentist claims—pursued aggressively to reclaim territory based on ethnic unification under an unratified 1960 union—which have fueled al-Shabaab terrorism, mirroring broader patterns of hostility against Israel by certain Islamist and Arab nationalist entities in wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Israel’s recognition counters such revanchism purely through defensive and security-based actions, rooted in legitimate historical rights and without any revanchist motive—sharply contrasting with aggressors’ vengeful drives to reverse losses through unprovoked assaults.

South Africa’s anti-Israel posture and antisemitic alliances embody anti-Western, anti-American ideology, as documented in the Hudson Institute’s 2025 analysis of antisemitism as a national security threat, exposing proponents’ factual ignorance and malicious intent to undermine democratic norms. The proposed “Apartheid Bill,” introduced by the Islamist party Al Jama-ah—which openly allies itself with Islamic terrorist entities—and backed by the ANC alongside the EFF and MK Party, weaponizes domestic law to prosecute support for Israel as apartheid complicity, providing Islamists a figleaf to target Jews with ties and exposing Pretoria as a rogue, racist state allied with global extremists. This legislative assault, alongside raids on US-funded centers, has deepened isolation and prompted US legislative responses like H.R. 2633, the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act of 2025, targeting ANC officials and threatening exclusion from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which could strip billions in trade benefits. As Iran’s collapse voids payments, South Africa faces imminent individual and state-level sanctions, hastening its economic stagnation, social balkanization, racial strife, violence, and governance collapse.

Diplomatic relations have cratered, with the expulsion of South Africa’s ambassador in DC, Consul General in Los Angeles, military attaché in DC, and rejection of its special envoy appointee—all due to apparent ties to terrorist entities. Incoming US Ambassador Brent Bozell arrives imminently to apply President Trump’s vision of confronting ANC corruption and anti-Western drift, while Pretoria has no diplomats in the US.

This stark divergence underscores broader global shifts. Israel stands ascendant as a locus of innovation and progress, leveraging intellect-driven advancements in technology, defense, and diplomacy to emerge among the world’s superpowers. Its opponents—commodity-dependent autocracies like Iran, Russia, and their proxies—grapple with decline, reliant on resource extraction rather than sustainable development. South Africa, by positioning itself as an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States through ICJ lawfare and alliances with terror sponsors, has sealed its fate as a doomed pariah state in terminal decline. The ANC’s anti-Zionist stance, intertwined with overt antisemitism, racial and tribal alliances, and Islamist terrorist allegiance, ensures the only functionality of the state is to further enrich its ANC thieves at the expense of the indigenous population—self-inflicted harms that underscore the folly of such positions.

The future of Africa lies not in nostalgic liberation rhetoric or alignments with collapsing regimes, but in entities like Somaliland that deliver order, democracy, and integration into global economies. The African Union has produced little to nothing for Africa’s population, while China plunders the continent as a new colonial master, enriching leaders as Africa declines. Israel has shown Africa a new path forward in recognizing Somaliland, and America will follow when the time is right.

For South Africa to avert Iran’s fate, regime change is imperative. The ANC, indistinguishable from Iran’s Mullahs in corruption, false ideologies, and abuse of the nation and its people, must be dismantled through democratic processes or international pressure. The South African population must urgently replace this government, jail ANC criminals for plunder, restore constitutional integrity and rule of law, and align with democratic partners. Just as Iran’s salvation depends on overthrowing the theocratic tyrants in Tehran, South Africa’s path to redemption requires ousting the ANC criminals. Until then, the international community should emulate Israel’s foresight by pivoting toward stable partners like Somaliland.

Africa will become ascendant as examples like Somaliland shine, and the corrupt ANC collapses alongside the Mullahs in Iran and Maduro in Venezuela. Israel, as usual, has shown the world the path forward. The partnership between Jewish Israel and Muslim Somaliland exemplifies fraternity, brotherhood, liberty, and democracy—a shining path for the world to emulate, fostering pro-Israel and pro-Zionist understanding as a bulwark against exported terrorism. Peace and prosperity will follow, remaking the world without the terrorism Iran exports and the corruption the ANC practices. Ignoring Somaliland validates coerced borders, imperiling NATO in parallel to Russia’s aggressive actions.

Israel’s bold recognition of Somaliland thus not only secures a vital democratic ally in a strategic chokepoint but stands as an unequivocal affirmation that the future belongs to nations built on intellect, innovation, and genuine self-determination—while those wedded to plunder, revanchism, and terror sponsorship, like the ANC’s South Africa, are consigned to the dustbin of history.