PRETORIA’S foreign policy is in complete disarray following the demarche of the Pro-Jihad Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool from Washington on Friday. The expelling of the Islamist South African ambassador to the United States signals an unprecedented escalation of tensions between the two countries.
Not only is Rasool supportive of the Islamic movement to create a clerical dictatorship in the Middle East to replace Israel, (known as Hamas), he seems to have ignored the fact Trump gained office primarily due to the Latino vote. Labeling any opposition to Arab expansionism as ‘racist’ or ‘supremacist’ or worse, Islamophobic, has become a routine slur against non-members of a faith practiced by 25% of the planet.
Be that as it may, neither nations nor religions are races. Rasool should know better than to label American citizens who want a closed Southern border to avoid drug cartels from Central America pursuing them, along with the associated decline in living standards as ‘racist’.
While Rasool’s race-baiting of Donald Trump was being taken to task by US secretary of State Marco Rubio, none of this has come as much of a surprise to those bothering to gain the perspective of both sides, and especially considering last months controversial co-authoring by our President of an article by the so-called Hague Group in a Foreign Policy journal, in which he doubles-down on strange claims made in an October 2024 address.
Ramaphosa seems to believe Israel was the one which attacked an outdoor peace festival in Gaza, taking hostages in the process. (You can read my response here)
As a candidate US ambassador to South Africa Joel Pollak suggests, the article “never once mentioned Hamas”, — as if the protagonists are merely the Hague Group and Israel. Pollak’s analysis of what has gone wrong with South African foreign policy should be required reading by our diplomatic corps, but of course that would mean foregoing the ostrich mentality associated with previous regimes, and a cancel culture which immediately labels any opinion not sanctioned by the Mullahs in Tehran as “Zionist” read “Haraam”.
Interviewed on local Jewish-focused radio, ChaiFm, Pollack who is a former South African, having married an anti-apartheid activist here, says “If you take a look at the big picture, South Africa has basically cast its lot with these terrorists and the regimes which support them. You have to ask why? Because in the heyday of the Rainbow Nation under Mandela, there was an idea that South Africa could play a positive peacemaking role, export some of the lessons of compromise and reconciliation from the transition to democracy, and these could be efficable whether in Northern Ireland or the Middle East.
This has shifted over time to a SA which wants to be on the side of the “Axis of Resistance” as the Iranians call it. The people who are trying to undermine American leadership, and to destroy Israel, and to suppress Western Europe, and that is where SA sees itself. To get there you have to misread the history of the South African transition as if it were a military victory by the ANC where it crushed all before it, and basically decided in its magnanimity to tolerate the presence of other people in the country, when actually it was a hard-won compromise . The lessons of that reconciliation have been lost.”