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Of all the vital foreign policy issues which might have occupied the ANC at its national conference in December, only one seemed to capture the party’s attention and imagination – downgrading South Africa’s embassy in Israel to a mere liaison office.
In fact, only about 150 of the 4 700 delegates attended the international relations commission where the decision was made, according to Zev Krengel, deputy president of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), who was present.
He told the SA Jewish Report there had been no real debate. The decision had been “orchestrated” and “steamrolled” because the ANC had been “hijacked and captured” by the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) lobby, he said.
None or very little attention had been given to “other major international atrocities, conflicts and human rights violations in Africa and the rest of the world”, Krengel said.
“The commission barely touched on the problems in Morocco and the Western Sahara; and it briefly touched on Swaziland’s King Mswati III.
“Not a word about the Libyan slave trade, or the civil war in Syria, or the Rohingya persecution in Myanmar, or the coup in Zimbabwe, or the instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Instead, it was clear that every speaker was there purely to make sure the downgrade happened.”
Evidently there was no discussion either about the recommendation from the policy conference that SA withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
What happens next is not yet clear. ANC foreign policy decisions are not always implemented. Will the ANC’s new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, dilute the Israel downgrade decision as he seems likely to dilute other radical policy decisions from the conference?
Perhaps. Yet the mandate from the ANC national conference on Israel was unusually peremptory; whereas the party’s policy conference in June had recommended the downgrade should be subject to an impact assessment, the December conference waived the impact study and determined the downgrade should occur “immediately and unconditionally”.
An impact study commissioned by the SAJBD before the ANC conference, by research firm Tutwa Consulting Group, had concluded a downgrade “would not serve South Africa’s national interests”.
The economic, political and psychological impact would be substantial. It noted that quantitatively, overall trade, investment and tourism between SA and Israel were “relatively minor […] relative to SA’s global footprint”.
Since 2000, SA’s exports to Israel had ranged between a high of 2.21% of its total exports in 2002, to a low of only 0.44% in 2016. In 2015, Israeli investment stock in SA reached R2.93bn, just 0.15% of the total foreign investment stock in SA of R1.9tr.
In 2016, Israeli tourists represented 0.25% of all tourist visits to SA, while South African tourists represented 0.72% of all tourists visiting Israel.
Nevertheless, the impact of a downgrade could be considerable, the report concluded. First, the absolute amounts of trade and investment were substantial, including R8.5bn of total trade last year. The possible loss of Israeli investment would cost thousands of jobs.
Tutwa also thought the qualitative impacts could be great. Israel had much to offer SA in some key strategic areas like advanced water-saving technology, including recycling waste water, treating acid mine drainage, desalination, drip irrigation and development of drought-resistant plants; and agro-processing.
The report also pointed out the prominence of the Jewish community in SA’s economy and warned that a downgrade could have “substantial negative impacts”, psychologically, on this community, snubbing it and thereby making influential business people reconsider domestic investment decisions.
Furthermore, the Tutwa report noted that SA’s fellow members of the Brics club of emerging nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China – shared Pretoria’s critical views about Israel’s handling of the Palestine issue. Yet all four continued to maintain full diplomatic relations with Israel and valued its contributions.
Being “holier than thou” would not serve SA’s national interest, Tutwa concluded.
Sometimes a country has to pay some economic price for taking the correct moral stance, the ANC would no doubt reply.
Yes, but harder for it to explain, though, would be the rather glaring inconsistency in the ANC’s foreign policy now revealed. Why is it not also downgrading relations with
North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Myanmar and a whole host of African countries – Sudan, DRC and Equatorial Guinea come to mind – which are treating their people at least as badly as the Israelis are treating the Palestinians?
Including Morocco, which many ANC members want SA to isolate because of its occupation of the Western Sahara. Instead, just before the ANC conference, President Jacob Zuma met Morocco’s King Mohammad VI in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and the two countries are upgrading relations to full ambassadorial level.
Downgrading relations with Israel would be a global first for the ANC government, which has never before willingly cut or diminished relations with any country.
In 1998 it did indeed downgrade relations with Taiwan from full embassies to liaison offices. But former President Nelson Mandela did that grudgingly and only because
Beijing had bullied him into accepting it as a condition for commencing relations with the mainland (thereby forcing SA to observe the “one-China” policy).
Is making Israel the sole exception to the cardinal Mandelian diplomatic principle of being a “Friend to the World” really justified by comparative circumstances?
Peter Fabricius is a consultant to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and a freelance foreign affairs journalist.
This article originally appeared in the 1 February edition of finweek. Buy and download the magazine here.
