14 hours ago
How will Ramaphosa deal with SA's foreign policy nightmare
South Affrica has a non-aligned foreign policy which has been seen as anti-U.S.
A radical cabal already dominates SA's foreign affairs department.
This week, the department – once studiously aloof from the ruling party's ideological feuds – showed it, too, has been drawn into the fray.
During an official visit to Tehran, the country's top general pledged political and military solidarity with Iran against the US and Israel.
It is the latest move in a quiet but fierce struggle inside the ANC between a dwindling band of what passes for moderates and an emboldened bloc of extremists, many with hard-line Islamist sympathies.
The former cling to the fiction of a non-aligned SA.
The latter see the present global disorder as their moment to cast the country as a heroic standard-bearer of the global south, leading the fight against 'Western imperialism' and 'US hegemony'.
General Rudzani Maphwanya, chief of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF), met in Tehran an array of Iran's top military leadership in a calculated affront to Washington.
The departments of international relations and cooperation (Dirco) and defence are now scrambling to disclaim his anti-US rhetoric, even as he publicly committed South Africa to joint military ventures with a pariah state.
Such denials should be taken with a generous pinch of salt. It is inconceivable that Maphwanya acted without the blessing of both departments and of the Presidency itself.
Maphwanya's actions are extraordinary for the head of a military in a democracy.
If the trip was unsanctioned and Maphwanya's statements unapproved, the implications are grave.
As chief of the SANDF, such unilateral actions would constitute a direct military intrusion into civilian affairs of near-treasonous proportions. Immediate dismissal and possible cash earnings from the SANDF would be warranted.
The department's responses have been striking.
Neither denied knowing about the general's trip but both issued statements stressing foreign policy is the responsibility of the Presidency and Dirco.
The implication is that they did know, but the general went rogue. If the trip was sanctioned, the diplomatic dis aster that has been unleashed demands account ability at the highest levels.
Ronald Lamola (Dir co), Angie Motshekga (defence), and Khumbudzo Ntshavheni (Presidency) should all be axed.
But the Presidency flatly denies any knowl edge of the trip or giving permission for it.
This statement is almost as extraordinary as the general's actions. If the President was kept in the dark and his ministers knew, they must be axed immediately.
The point is that there is a military stirring that needs to be nipped in the bud.
It should be extremely concerning, especially to the ANC's partners in the government of national unity, that there is a strong possibility the Islamist-led bloc dominating Dirco has found a like-minded, equally senior anti-US/anti-Israel faction within the SANDF.
The rot is spreading, and the consequences are eye-popping.
This is not non-alignment.
It's a confirmation of the US position articulated by US President Donald Trump in the February executive order: South Africa is actively acting against the interests of America in its embrace of Iran.
Domestically, the implications of a politically assertive military are equally alarming.
This is the well-worn route taken by every 'liberation party' regime north of the Limpopo: a slide towards authoritarianism, one-party dominance, repression and the occasional military coup. SA is now caught between two forces: an increasingly radicalised foreign policy and a militarised ideological alignment.
What began with a quiet capture of Dirco has metastasised into an open assertion of anti-Western sentiment at the heart of the SANDF.
The president and his coalition partners in the GNU must ruthlessly excise the cancer. But they won't.
