SA Falls Prey to US Playbook on Human Rights, Regime Change

IOL News

2 days ago

A worker checks the first copy of "The Star", the biggest and most respected South African daily, hot from the printing press on May 02, 1994 in Johannesburg, South Africa, as it headlines Nelson Mandela as next president of the country following the ANC victory in the first all-race elections. Thirty years of governance have taken their toll on the ANC. This vulnerability created the ideal conditions for a regime change strategy to advance, says the writer.
Image: AFP
Dr. Reneva Fourie
The pattern is well-worn.
Regardless of the issue or the president in power, if a country refuses to toe the Washington line, accusations of human rights abuses become the weapon of choice. Cuba and Venezuela were targeted primarily because of their economic policies, which diverged from the model preferred by Washington. Iran and China were labelled for achieving successes that rivalled or surpassed Western capabilities.
Now the target is South Africa. The offence is that the country dared to take Israel to the International Court of Justice and lay bare evidence of genocidal acts. When pressure failed to deter the government from this principled course, the United States released a plethora of destabilising interventions, the most recent being a report alleging that the human rights situation in South Africa had worsened significantly.
In the past, millions accepted the official story told about countries placed on Washington's list of offenders. They defended sanctions that crippled economies and harmed civilians. Those who challenged the propaganda were branded as conspiracy theorists or apologists for despots. South Africans are now watching this process unfold in real time. Narratives are created and disseminated through a system of media, think tanks, and lobbying networks, until repetition renders them true.
This is not a new phenomenon. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent detailed how media and political elites shape public perception to align with imperial interests. The same playbook is being used against South Africa. The US government, alongside its allies in the corporate media and right-wing NGOs, is constructing a narrative of a 'failing state' to justify intervention.
Several sources, including Dale McKinley's The ANC and the Liberation Struggle: A Critical Political Biography, indicate that the seeds of regime-change had been planted well before the democratic transition. Knowing that the fall of apartheid was imminent, and that the vast socio-economic disparities due to apartheid policies would compel some form of social protection, deliberate efforts were made to secure capital control of the economy and progressively erode the highly popular power of South Africa's liberation movement.
Thirty years of governance have taken their toll on the ANC. Internal disputes, corruption scandals, and declining service delivery have eroded public trust. This vulnerability created the ideal conditions for a regime change strategy to advance. In the run-up to the 2024 general election, large sums were poured into a coordinated effort to remove the ANC from power. One significant step was a meeting held in Gdańsk, Poland, in 2023. Out of this gathering came plans for a political coalition to challenge the ANC, then known as the Moonshot Pact.
The return of the Trump administration to power in the United States gave impetus to the regime-change agenda. Backed strongly by the Zionist lobby, the administration re-established links with figures and groups rooted in the apartheid era. It embraced false claims promoted by AfriForum and Solidarity about state-sponsored genocide, land seizures, and restrictions on cultural rights. These are being weaponised to discredit progressive forces inside the South African government.
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The United States' 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in South Africa presents itself as objective but is a work of distortion. It accuses the government of complicity in extra-judicial killings, repression of free expression, and antisemitism. It claims the state had failed to take credible action against officials responsible for human rights abuses and included allegations of inflammatory racial rhetoric and violence against racial minorities.
The Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation rejected the report outright. It described it as inaccurate and deeply flawed, and said it ignored the reality of South Africa's constitutional democracy. Despite this, Solidarity announced plans to travel to the United States in September. Its stated purpose is to propose ways for Washington and other foreign actors to improve human rights in South Africa.
There is no moral or political justification for such an appeal. The United States is a country that fails to address its own deep racial and economic inequalities and that has fuelled human rights abuses globally through war, sanctions, and covert operations. South Africa already has the National Dialogue, which provides a platform for honest discussion and collective problem-solving.
Solidarity's actions are treasonous. They seek to restore the racial hierarchy of the past and place South Africa under a form of minority rule that would guarantee elite privilege. What Solidarity and its allies may not realise is that they are not the architects of this agenda but the instruments of it. The real prize for Washington and its corporate backers is a government that will embrace neoliberal policies without question. That role fits the Democratic Alliance perfectly.
The United States is becoming more open in its regime change tactics, confident that the same methods used in Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe can work in Southern Africa. It is aggressively forging ahead to undermine South Africa's ability to determine its policies, protect its resources, and shape its future free from foreign control.
The answer is not to retreat into denial or partisanship. It is to recognise that the struggle for sovereignty is a shared one. External actors can exploit the divisions that exist within South African society unless they are addressed honestly and directly. That is why the National Dialogue process is critical. It provides a forum where competing visions can be debated without the interference of those whose only interest is to control outcomes for their gain.
South Africa has faced powerful adversaries before. The defeat of apartheid was not a gift. It was the result of unity, sacrifice, and a refusal to accept the idea that the powerful always win. The same spirit is needed now. We need to be united on the principle that the people of South Africa, and no one else, must decide the country's future. If South Africans adhere to that principle, the current campaign of manipulation and pressure will fail, just as previous attempts to crush the people's will have failed.
* Dr Reneva Fourie is a policy analyst specialising in governance, development, and security.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.