It seems likely the United States covertly approved South Africa's ICJ application

What to expect under Trump?

A year ago South Africa filed its application at the ICJ, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Since then Israel has killed many more Palestinians and committed vastly more atrocities.

The dominant narrative in world media (mainstream and alternative) is that South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice to stop Israel’s assault on Gaza was a challenge not just to Israel but also the United States and other Western countries that support Israel. I am proposing an alternative, dramatically different view: that the United States government covertly encouraged South Africa’s ICJ application and may even have been the source of the idea for it. Having written five background pieces already (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), this piece aims to briefly summarise my theory about what actually happened - along with the suggestive evidence for that.

After I first flighted my suspicions about the ICJ application I received a message from someone with contacts among South African officials who said “there was an understanding [among] high-level political staff that South Africa ‘could only have’ approached the ICJ with the prior, tacit acquiescence of the US”. One of my Substack subscribers later, separately, recounted an anecdote in which the South African minister of justice reportedly made a similar off-the-cuff remark to an acquaintance of theirs. Beyond such suggestive rumours and unverifiable anecdotes, there is suggestive evidence in the public domain.

The most recent example is the special Bill passed by the South African parliament approving 96 million Rand for the ICJ application. Contrary to their prior foreign policy stances, the former opposition Democratic Alliance, Patriotic Alliance and BOSA voted in favour of the Bill. Preceding that, the South African media had kept the funding details suspiciously quiet despite being published in widely-read documents tabled in Parliament. And shortly before that vote, the formerly pro-Israel leader of the PA, Gayton McKenzie, met with the US ambassador (at the ambassador’s residence, contrary to standard protocol). These about-faces have not been credibly explained.¹

All the major South African media groups are demonstrably biased in favour of US foreign policy — especially under the US Democratic Party — so their recent conduct is consistent with my broader theory about the US pivot on Israel and its covert support for the ICJ application.

There is little information about how the idea emerged among South Africa’s 2023 Cabinet, but one thing that critics and supporters of president Cyril Ramaphosa agree on is his general unwillingness to take major decisions quickly.² Moreover, an examination of his political history shows that he has rarely been concerned with foreign policy matters relative to domestic ones. Yet the prevailing narrative would require one to believe that within three weeks of the October 7 attack his foreign minister was beginning to publicly criticise Israel, formal steps followed shortly thereafter and within two months (or less) he was willing to make a highly controversial application in a major international conflict that challenged the world’s most powerful nation and its allies, at a time when that relationship was already under threat. That seems extremely implausible.

So what really happened? My previous timeline of recent US-South Africa relations provides some clues. A case of dollar-related criminal activity was lodged against Ramaphosa in June 2022, after which the then-opposition DA wrote to the United States asking for its intervention. Shortly thereafter the minister of foreign affairs, Naledi Pandor, began a series of regular engagements with US politicians and officials ‘after a hiatus of 8 years’. A month later Ramaphosa visited Washington for a series of direct meetings with Joe Biden. The marked shift in SA-USA engagement — towards collaboration — continued despite the storm around the (false) allegations of weapons smuggling to Russia and threats from Congress. So too did the process for renewal of South Africa’s AGOA status continue. That this continued after the ICJ application and the (also false) allegations of Iranian contradict the dominant narrative about SA-USA relations.

In April 2024, International relations minister Naledi Pandor attempted to explain the surprising inaction by the USA, in the face of these supposed provocations, as being due to what she suggests is South Africa’s geopolitical leverage. Those insinuations simply do not stand up to scrutiny. The US could engage in a range of retaliatory measures without threatening its own interests in South Africa, which is a very small player in that regard. The more obvious reason the US has not done so, is because the White House knew very well that the arms smuggling accusations were false and that it had approved — maybe even actively encouraged — the ICJ application.

As I noted in the timeline, in March 2024 Pandor stressed that “our problem is not with the White House [but with Congress]”. That is exactly what one would expect to happen if the two governments were playing a game of publicly having opposing foreign policy positions while engaging in covert coordination: Congress would see the former but not be briefed on the latter.

Among the 14 countries that have supported South Africa’s ICJ application to date, two (Egypt and Turkey) are quite evidently US proxies or allies, while three more (Chile, Colombia and Mexico) have similar overt-versus-covert positioning with the USA to South Africa’s.

It is hard to say when the US may have indicated to South Africa that it supported an application to the ICJ. The most intriguing possibility is that it may have hinted at such a situation in 2022, long before the 7 October attack by Hamas. Or it may have done so through one of the many channels created from mid-2022 onwards, after Israel began its attack on Gaza. Perhaps we will never know for sure — as is often the case with covert operations.

Implications under Trump

The above approach may have been driven by a number of considerations, one of which — as I will discuss in my next piece — may have been the leverage that the United States had over Ramaphosa due to the PhalaPhala matter. But it appears to have also been premised on the Democrats staying in power after the US’s 2024 elections. With Trump’s victory, that strategy now seems far more risky.

The most obvious reason for that, is that Trump’s outlook for the Middle East and Israel may be very different to what Biden was pursuing. However, my view is that the ‘deep state’ tends to keep politicians to the planned trajectory, one way or another.

Given how much of a wildcard he is, it is unclear whether the US intelligence establishment is likely to fully brief Trump on some of its more subtle operations. If they do not do so on the covert role of the US in South Africa’s ICJ application, there would appear to be a real danger that Trump could support formal retaliation.

Offsetting that concern is that fact that Ramaphosa has already sought to use non-state channels to engage with Trump before his scheduled inauguration. Even before the election Ramaphosa went out of his way, almost to a humiliating degree, to engage with Elon Musk while attending the UN General Assembly.

Whether or not Trump does get fully briefed on recent behind-the-scenes cooperation, and whether or not he continues the trajectory set by the Biden administration, there are three main reasons why I very much doubt any serious, negative measures by the United States against South Africa are forthcoming:

1. The supposed provocations by South Africa either did not happen (as in the case of the Lady R weapons smuggling) or were tacitly supported by the US ‘deep state’ (as in the case of the ICJ application)

2. Ramaphosa has already sought to ingratiate himself to Trump and parts of Trump’s new entourage and the second-largest party in the new coalition (the DA) has been ingratiating itself to the US State and its institutions for years (if not decades)

3. The US may have played an active, if subtle, role in the manipulation of South Africa’s 2024 election to secure the defeat of the ANC and the creation of the new governing coalition: it is in its (the US’s) interests to see a post-ANC government perform better than its predecessors.

So, the good news is that South Africa is unlikely to suffer form any punitive actions by the USA.

The bad news is that this is largely because its sovereignty, and Ramaphosa’s independence, may have been substantially compromised in the last few years.

[The original version of this article was slightly edited after publication to correct a few minor punctuation errors and omissions]

1. The only attempt at explanation cites various politicians as saying that opposition to the Bill could collapse the coalition. Given that various DA ministers have been opposing much more substantive pieces of legislation (such as the BELA Act and the SABC Bill) this narrative is not very persuasive.

2. Search for “Ramaphosa indecisive” on your favourite search engine and you will find at least a score of articles on the subject.