Stop bailing out South Africa’s corrupt leaders

South Africa’s current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has betrayed Nelson Mandela’s legacy of human rights and social justice.

South Africa’s citizens suffer through daily power blackouts of up to 12 hours, days at a time without running water and one of the world’s worst-performing school systems. This is all credibly alleged to be caused by corruption.  Abroad, Ramaphosa aligns himself with Hamas, Russia and a Sudanese-Arab militia leader who massacres Africans.

It’s time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.

Despite South Africa’s massive corruption, documented in a 5,000-page report by its chief justice, and successful U.S. prosecutions of multinational corporations for bribing South African officials, the administration has not imposed corruption sanctions against any South African official. Yet the administration has imposed corruption sanctions on dozens of officials from numerous other countries around the world. 

In addition, some $3 billion in South African exports enter the U.S. duty-free each year, thanks to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Last year, Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) warned that South Africa, by aiding Russia’s military, was “in danger of losing AGOA benefits” by violating the statutory requirement that beneficiaries “not engage in activities that undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.” Yet South Africa’s AGOA benefits have continued, even while the administration has enforced AGOA’s requirements by terminating eight other countries’ benefits.

South Africans deserve better than Ramaphosa, and many of them know it. Polls show the Ramaphosa-led African National Congress (ANC) party with less than 40 percent support ahead of South Africa’s May 29 election. 

Media reviews of Ramaphosa’s first term are scathing. A recent Times of London news article said that Ramaphosa has “little to show for his six years in power” other than “record levels of unemployment, inequality, national debt and crime” and “an economy wrecked by rolling power cuts, mismanagement and corruption.” The article indicated Ramaphosa is highlighting international developments, including South Africa’s case against Israel, “given the dearth of domestic progress.”

The ANC is no longer the moral beacon it was under Mandela, South Africa’s president from 1994 to 1999. The chief justice’s 2022 report into corruption during the presidency of Jacob Zuma, Ramaphosa’s predecessor, revealed “the looting of billions of dollars from South Africa’s state coffers” and “how almost every arm of the state was suffocated and left bankrupt by leaders” of the ANC. Calling the report a “massive indictment of the party,” the BBC said the investigation determined Ramaphosa, Zuma’s deputy president, “should have done more to prevent the graft.” Ramaphosa has also reportedly made no significant progress in prosecuting those involved in his party’s corruption. 

South Africa’s school system is today reportedly so plagued by graft that it spends as much per student as Scandinavian countries but has learning outcomes that are the world’s worst by several measures. Amid this chaos, South Africa now has the world’s highest overall unemployment rate (32.1 percent), a 59 percent unemployment rate for young people and the world’s second-highest murder rate.  

A CNN investigation last year suggested corruption may also be encouraging the ANC’s pro-Putin foreign policy. South Africa held joint naval drills with Russia on the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, and has reportedly supplied Russia with weapons usable against Ukraine.

The Congressional Research Service says that the ANC “has received political financing from a firm linked to U.S.-sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.” The Vekselberg-linked firm reportedly paid $826,000 to fund the ANC convention at which Ramaphosa was nominated for a second term. At a time when the ANC has been struggling to pay its staff, Vekselberg-linked sources are reportedly the ANC’s largest single source of funding.

Meanwhile, ANC-led South Africa has also repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. 

Ramaphosa’s corruption challenges and terrorism ties went relatively unnoticed in Washington until he did something especially hypocritical and conspicuous: pose as a friend of human rights by baselessly generating an International Court of Justice (ICJ) case accusing Israel of genocide as it defends itself against Hamas. The White House accurately called South Africa’s submission “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” The case has nevertheless undermined U.S. national security by incentivizing terrorists to use human shields. 

The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.” A second major South African newspaper, The Citizen, asked: “Is Iran funding the ANC? ANC’s sudden wealth fuels suspicion…and the party refuses to divulge its funding sources.” The ANC has denied the charge.

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by Ramaphosa warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

Earlier in 2023, the RSF had engaged in what Reuters described as a “killing frenzy” elsewhere in Darfur, butchering more than 1,000 people over more than 50 days of “systematic and coordinated” murderous attacks against the “darker-skinned Masalit tribe” to whom, Reuters says, the Arab attackers repeatedly referred as “slaves.”

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement. In addition to the AGOA  benefits, the U.S. is the largest provider of development assistance to South Africa, $660 million per year. The U.S. has also committed more than $1 billion to help South Africa’s profoundly corrupt and reform-resistant energy sector transition to renewable energy.

Under Ramaphosa, South Africa’s government has violated the requirements that AGOA beneficiaries not undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy and not “provide support for acts of international terrorism.” The U.S. should terminate South Africa’s AGOA benefits unless such activities cease. 

Congress and the administration should also investigate corruption in South Africa’s electrical, water, and educational services and foreign policy, and hold ANC officials accountable. It is time to end impunity for corrupt South African officials. Just as Americans once stood with the people of South Africa against a government that discriminated on the basis of race, we should now stand with them to ensure their leaders cease to engage in corruption at their expense.

Orde F. Kittrie is a law professor at Arizona State University and senior official at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served for more than a decade as a U.S. State Department and policy official.