South Africa Must Stop Begging for Dignity

Opinion | Politics

By Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Not for the first time, and surely not the last, South Africa finds itself caught in the crosswinds of American foreign policy. This week’s announcement of impending U.S. sanctions on selected ANC politicians has been met with predictable outrage in Pretoria. But the reaction, laced with theatrical surprise and diplomatic indignation, rings hollow. What, exactly, did we think the Trump “rules-based international order” meant?

South African administration needs to dispense with all political illusion that Trump is our friend and concerned with the best of our economic development and all. Trump is about Trump, not necessarily even about what is best for the USA, but what is best for him and his political image. In fact, Washington has never disguised the operating logic of its empire. Its foreign policy has always been guided not by moral principle, but by strategic convenience. From the Monroe Doctrine to the war in Iraq, from Vietnam to Venezuela, America does not lead by example, it compels by force, by finance, by fear in its foreign policy.

And yet South Africa, the country that once inspired the world with its principled defiance of apartheid, now flinches in the face of moral clarity. This moral confusion has reached a farcical pitch under President Cyril Ramaphosa. Late last year, the South African Parliament passed a historic motion calling for the closure of the Israeli embassy in Pretoria, an unambiguous gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people amidst Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. The vote was loud, clear, and democratically expressed. But months later, the embassy remains open. It is stuck in Ramaphosa’s office, the ever so called cautious tactician, who is know for dithering and political spinelessness.

The delay is not administrative. It is political cowardice.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration, the typical American blunt coercion with a velvet tongue, has proffered new slate of tariffs on South African exports, citing vague breaches of trade obligations and “national security” concerns. In truth, this is payback dressed in policy: a warning shot to Pretoria for its audacity in supporting Palestine, for its alignment with BRICS, and for attempting, however weakly, to assert a sovereign path.

This is not diplomacy. It is imperial discipline.

The absurdity is made starker by history. It took until 2008 for the United States to remove Nelson Mandela from its official terrorism watchlist. Long after he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Long after he had walked free. Long after he had stood shoulder to shoulder with American presidents. The same nation that now pontificates about democracy in Taiwan and Ukraine refused, for decades, to acknowledge the humanity of a man who symbolized the global struggle against racial tyranny.

Desmond Tutu saw this clearly. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” he warned. Yet neutrality, or worse, complicity, has become South Africa’s foreign policy posture, from Harare to Gaza. We weep for Gaza from podiums while Israeli trade continues uninterrupted. We speak of transformation while welcoming arms manufacturers to our shores. We grandstand at The Hague while entertaining Israeli diplomats in Pretoria.

This is not non-alignment. It is hypocrisy with a diplomatic passport.

Steve Biko diagnosed the rot decades ago: “The greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Trump knows well how to play his weapon against the confused ANC leadership cohorts. The South African current leadership is the theatrical performance of liberation emptied of its radical content? Ramaphosa travels the globe as a merchant of mild platitudes, whispering about justice while preserving the privileges of capital, of whiteness, of Western approval.

Robert rejected this attitude of African leadership, their penchant to make themselves stooges on the circus of Western governments capitals: “They are prepared to accept us, provided we behave like good ‘natives.’” That conditional acceptance, the unspoken etiquette of empire, is now a leash around the neck on African foreign policy.

But the real scandal is not American hypocrisy. It is our failure to act.

It is not enough to file papers at the ICJ. It is not enough to lower flags and light candles. If we truly believe that the Palestinian cause mirrors our own anti-apartheid struggle, as the ANC repeatedly claims, then why do we allow Zionist capital to flow freely through our banks, our firms, our civil society? Why do we continue to trade with Israel’s military suppliers? Why are we silent while U.S. arms, funded by American taxpayers, turn Palestinian cities into rubble?

South Africa is not a victim of U.S. foreign policy. We are a participant in its theatre. A reluctant understudy, perhaps, but one who still plays the part. We must stop asking Washington for dignity. It will not give it. Certainly not under Trump. Nor will Brussels. Or Davos for that matter. Dignity must be taken, not requested. Exercised, not deferred.

This is a moment of global realignment. Neutrality is a myth. The world is dividing, not into neat blocs of East and West, but into camps of domination and resistance. Those who profit from genocide and those who resist it. Those who act, and those who moralise from the sidelines.

To be clear: the Palestinian struggle is not the only moral frontier. But it is the litmus test of our times, as apartheid once was in the 1980s. And on this test, South Africa is failing by choosing symbolic speeches over substantive sanctions, and press statements over principled stances. We cannot build a just world while protecting the profits of injustice.

If we mean what we say, then the time for speeches is over. Shut down the Israeli embassy. Impose sanctions on arms companies supplying the occupation. Cut ties with banks and institutions that launder the profits of ethnic cleansing. Support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement not just in rhetoric, but in law and trade. Yes, it will cost us. Real sovereignty always does.

Mandela did not become a global icon because he was moderate. He became one because he was unflinching. Because he faced down global pressure and declared, “I am not your puppet.” He made the world uncomfortable. That is what real moral leadership looks like.

Until South Africa regains that voice, it will remain a country with revolutionary slogans and reactionary policy. A flag that flutters, but no longer flies.

And history, when it returns to judge this era of genocide, will not ask who spoke, but who acted.

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