Set on being in the spotlight, South Africa should instead be seen in a dim light opting to exploit troubles abroad while ignoring them closer to home.
By David E. Kaplan
How should one read South Africa’s moral mindset when it champions the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and yet on its doorstep ignores jihadi attacks on its north-eastern border of Mozambique where more than 67,000 people have fled attacks in recent weeks?
“What is particularly of concern to UNICEF is that the majority of these displaced people are women and children, more than two-thirds of the total when combined,” said Guy Taylor, UNICEF’s (United Nations Children’s Fund) Mozambique spokesperson.
What’s more, “the insurgency isn’t ending anytime soon,” says Jasmine Opperman, a Security Consultant specializing in Extremism and Political Violence in southern Africa. “This is about organised chaos to create fear, to recruit and spread an Islamic extremism narrative.”
Nary a murmur on this issue on its doorstep, but a half a world away, South Africa launches – basking in splendid media spotlight – a legal assault on Israel at the UN’s highest court at The Hague.
We should not be surprised.
For a variety of reasons all comfortably closeted in self-interest, South Africa choses to be in the terrorist camp as evidenced by revelations that South Africa today is now “a nerve centre for jihadist financing.”
“South Africa is open hunting ground,” the Pretoria-based counter-terrorism expert Jasmine Opperman told Agence France-Presse.
Islamist financiers gather money in the country and transfer it into “the hands of terrorism,” she said, adding it was internationally recognised “that we are now a hub.”
Opperman’s assessment is widely shared by analysts across Africa, Europe and the United States.
Red flags were first raised in 2023 when the US government levied sanctions on several South Africans it accused of belonging to an Islamic State (IS) cell. According to Washington, money was being transmitted out of South Africa to IS branches across Africa. According to the US treasury in November, IS was being provided from South Africa with “technical, financial, or material support.”
In March last year, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global illicit cash flow watchdog that aims to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing, placed South Africa on its “grey list” finding that South Africa today is “a fertile ground” for Islamists to raise funds.
“South Africa’s role in international terrorism dates back more than a decade,” says Ryan Cummings an analyst with the Cape Town based Signal Risk security advisory firm. He cited intelligence evidence that suggested Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab used South Africa to move funds after the 2013 attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya’s capital.
There are also reports, said Cummings of “an increase of funds… flowing from South Africa” to Mozambique and an ISIS affiliate in the DR Congo.
TERRORISM IS ‘BANKING’ ON SOUTH AFRICA
Is it any further surprise that banks in South Africa may be – unwittingly or not – facilitating payments to Hamas and affiliated organizations. Uncovered in a recent Jerusalem Post investigative report , there appears to be a network of several South African organizations deeply involved in Hamas funding. According to the researched report, three of the country’s main banks, Nedbank, Standard Bank, and Absa, were accused of enabling funding for Hamas activities through the Al-Quds Foundation, an international group sanctioned by the US and outlawed by Israel. Through the cunning guise of charity, the Al-Quds International Foundation was established in Beirut in 2021 by members of Hamas to raise funds for their terror organization.
So grave is this development, especially since the massacre of October 7, the taking and still holding of hostages and the war that has followed, South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, has written to the CEOs of these banks appealing for them:
“To come and see me to provide assurance and proof that these allegations are without merit.”
In muscular mode – “This is not 1938. It is 2024” – the Chief Rabbi says that failing their cooperation, he has warned the banks that “there are numerous local criminal and international anti-terror laws here that they may be contravening. I will personally pursue this case on every forum to hold them accountable.”
If South Africa can lay false charges of genocide against the Jewish state at the Hague, it should not be surprised if it too finds itself facing real charges on complicity in international terrorism resulting in mass murder and massacre of Jews.
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