Pretoria just booted Israel’s top diplomat for an unforgivable offense: trying to help rural South Africans access clean water.
Instead of focusing on the well-being of its citizens, the South African government is picking fights with the United States and its allies.
In its January 30 announcement, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) declared Israeli Charge d’Affaires Ariel Seidman persona non grata, giving him 72 hours to vacate the country.
DIRCO accused Israel of committing “a series of unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa’s sovereignty,” including “the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks” against South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The posts in question are rather bland. After Ramaphosa called on Israel to release South Africans detained for trying to breach the blockade of Gaza, the Israeli embassy stated that Jerusalem was deporting the lawbreakers and that South African taxpayers would foot the bill.
After Ramaphosa objected to the United States skipping the G20 summit being held in South Africa, the South African president declared, “boycott politics doesn’t work.” But Ramaphosa’s statement contradicts his African National Congress (ANC) party’s boycott politics targeting Israel.
Pointing out the hypocrisy, the Israeli Embassy called it “A rare moment of wisdom and diplomatic clarity from President Ramaphosa.”
Social media squabbles mask the real cause of the kerfuffle. David Saranga, head of Israel’s digital diplomacy initiative and an unofficial ambassador to South Africa, recently visited the country.
The king of the Xhosa nation, South Africa’s second-largest ethnic group, hosted Saranga in the country’s Eastern Cape region last week. During the meeting, Saranga promoted South Africans’ right to access clean water and had an Israeli nonprofit demonstrate how it can improve the lives of remote South African communities.
This is a particularly sensitive issue for the ANC as the Eastern Cape faces severe water shortages during an election year. The Democratic Alliance, the country’s second-largest party, blames government failure and mismanagement for infrastructure deficiencies in the region. Rolling blackouts, pervasive potholes, and decaying infrastructure typify ANC-led South Africa.
While failing on domestic issues, the ANC has made hostility toward Israel a pillar of its foreign policy.
South Africa recalled its ambassador to Israel in 2018 and downgraded its embassy to a liaison office in 2019 over violence on the Gaza border. Tensions escalated a month after Hamas’s atrocities in southern Israel — in November 2023 — when South Africa called Israel’s response a “genocide” and recalled its diplomats.
Pretoria’s decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice in December 2023 on spurious genocide charges removed any doubt that it was engaged in diplomatic warfare against the Jewish state.
The ANC’s fight with Israel put South Africa on the wrong side of the United States. Shortly after taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned Pretoria’s hostility toward Israel in an executive order that cut all aid to South Africa. The executive action also noted South Africa’s worrying ties to Iran.
Just last month, as the regime in Tehran was waist-deep in the blood of an estimated tens of thousands of murdered protesters, South Africa hosted a naval delegation that included Iran, Russia, and China. The exercise was part of South Africa positioning itself as a pillar of the anti-Western bloc led by the U.S. adversaries that are also serial human rights violators.
This is far from the first time that South Africa has cut off its nose to spite its face in relations with Israel.
In 2016, Israel warned South Africa that Cape Town could face serious water shortages. The South African government ignored or rejected Israeli offers of assistance, opting instead to partner with Iran — the same Iran that is currently considering moving its capital because of water mismanagement. Two years later, Cape Town came dangerously close to “Day Zero” — the day the taps would go dry.
Though Pretoria repeatedly rejects water assistance from Israel, it gladly carries water for Hamas on the international stage and conducts naval exercises with Russia, China, and Iran. The South African government fails its citizens by picking fights with Israel, rejecting Israeli assistance, and aligning with despotic U.S. adversaries.
David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from the author and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
