Hypocrisy and selective morality characterise South Africa’s foreign policy
By Allan Wolman
Politicsweb is a subscriber-supported online publication publishing news, commentary, analysis and key documentation related to the politics of South Africa. It is pretty widely read for its political and current event opinions submitted by contributors. It is also proving a malicious platform for attacking Israel!
A toxic anti-Israel advocacy organization and media platform called the Media Revue Network (MRN), closely aligned to BDS, receives a disproportionate amount of coverage on Politicsweb. Hardly a week goes by that virulently anti-Israel articles by Iqbal Jassat of the MRN do not appear in Polticsweb, naturally for the sole purpose of demonising Israel. While I’ve submitted numerous over the years pieces relating to Israel without ever being published, Politicsweb has no problem publishing articles by the anti-Jewish MRN, whose organization’s website states amongst its services:
– To monitor, analyse and evaluate the double standards in the mass media
– To express alternate perspectives and policy positions on local and international issues
Their website, makes mention of Kashmir, Myanmar (Rohingyas) and of course the Middle East but strangely little mention of the desperate plight of millions of the Uyghur Muslims living in Southern Xinjiang under the most repressive and religious persecution witnessed in modern times.
The Muslim Uyghur population in China has faced severe and systemic persecution, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Reports from human rights organizations and international observers highlight the existence of mass detention camps, often referred to as “re-education camps,” where Uyghurs are allegedly subjected to indoctrination, forced renunciation of their Islamic faith, psychological and physical abuse, and worse.
In addition, the Chinese government has implemented policies aimed at erasing Uyghur culture and identity, which include:
– demolition of mosques and Islamic cultural sites
– bans on traditional religious practices
– restrictions on the use of the Uyghur language
Human rights lawyer and former UN employee turned whistle-blower, Emma Reilly, exposed the UN’s troubling practice of providing China with the names of Uyghur dissidents and human rights activists. Reilly reported these serious concerns to (South African) Navi Pillay, the then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who to her shame, failed to act on the complaints or investigate the potentially harmful practice. By ignoring these warnings, Pillay not only allowed the practice to continue but also contributed to the UN initiated witch hunt against Reilly. The UN has, not for the first time, undermined its credibility, revealing an unwillingness to challenge the obvious, and glaringly exposes its double standards and ‘moral authority’.
South Africa, which proudly boasts a foreign policy rooted in its post-apartheid identity of human rights, social justice, and multiculturalism, reveals a glaring hypocrisy in its selective approach to global injustices. While the ANC government vocally champions taking Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it remains shamefully silent on China’s brutal genocide against the Uyghurs. This double standard is a stark betrayal of the principles South Africa claims to uphold, while choosing non-interference over condemning genocide and systemic oppression of China’s Muslim peoples. Such silence exposes South Africa’s foreign policy as more about political convenience and contrivance than genuine commitment to global justice and human rights.
SOUNDS OF SILENCE
In her former ministerial position as South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, publicly addressed numerous human rights issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (against Israel) and the Russia-Ukraine war (supportive of Russia). Yet, her conspicuous silence on the Uyghur crisis mirrors South Africa’s reluctance to confront China’s abuses, aligning instead with its non-interference policy. This selective activism underscores the ANC’s misguided world view.
Equally reprehensible is the absence of condemnation from voices like Iqbal Jassat and the MRN, whose mission is explicitly:
“…to monitor, analyse, and evaluate double standards”.
Their silence in the face of China’s well-documented atrocities against Uyghurs is deafening and indefensible. But this organization’s world view is firmly in sync with the ANC government as it ignores the atrocities against the Uyghurs of Xinjiang.
If they can’t blame Jews, why blame!
This behaviour begs the question:
Is it truly about Palestine and the Palestinian people?
Both the ANC government and the MRN have glaringly turned a blind eye to:
– the plight of the Uyghurs
– the relentless and systematic oppression of Afghan women condemning half of Afghanistan’s population to lives of extreme deprivation, humiliation, and cruelty and
– the unspeakable horrors recently exposed under Bashar al-Assad’s brutal reign in Syria.
This is selective morality by South Africa. Is it any wonder that the new US administration has seen right through South Africa’s pretence as some ‘moral authority’, its political shenanigans and hypocrisy, and is taking a stand with President Trump – only weeks in office – announcing that it will cut all funding to South Africa while it launches an investigation into the country’s policies, describing it as “massive human rights violations.”
For South Africa that maliciously maligned the Jewish state of false charges of genocide, the chickens are coming home to roost.
About the writer:
Allan Wolman in 1967 joined 1200 young South Africans to volunteer to work on agricultural settlements in Israel during the Six Day War. After spending a year in Israel, he returned to South Africa where he met and married Jocelyn Lipschitz and would run one of the oldest travel agencies in Johannesburg – Rosebank Travel. He would also literally ‘run’ three times in the “Comrades”, one of the most grueling marathons in the world as well as participate in the “Argus” (Cape Town’s famed international annual cycling race) an impressive eight times. Allan and Jocelyn immigrated to Israel in 2019.
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