South Africa’s expulsion of Israel’s Chargé D’Affaires is looking like absolutely fabulous fodder for comedians.
By Marika Sboros
(First published in The Daily Friend)
South Africa’s expulsion of Israel’s top diplomat in the country,
Ariel Seidman, is also a prime example of the African National Congress (ANC) government’s hypocrisy and double standards whenever Israel and Jews get in its way.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) used the phrase, persona non grata, in announcing Ariel Seidman’s expulsion. The phrase has a pleasing, operatic ring to it – all Latin flourish and sovereign gravitas.
It is one of the “most serious tools in a state’s diplomatic repertoire,” says DA international relations spokesman, Ryan Smith. It is usually reserved for cases of espionage, security threats or serious breaches of international law.
Not the petty, public, political spat behind Seidman’s expulsion.
If DIRCO meant the phrase to evoke images of strength and sovereign gravitas, it failed miserably.
It evokes images of ragged Eastern Cape children forced to walk kilometres for water when they should be in school; of patients of all ages, suffering unnecessarily, dying prematurely in under-resourced, badly maintained hospitals; and of fat-cat adults in Pretoria patting themselves on the back for defending a thin-skinned leader’s hurt feelings.
DIRCO has formally packaged its case for expelling Seidman in a way that is unfettered by robust evidence.
It has alleged a sustained campaign of “offensive” attacks on President Cyril Ramaphosa on social media, and “gross abuse” of diplomatic protocol and privilege affecting South Africa’s “sovereignty”.
The most concrete “evidence” it came up with so far to buttress its claims against Seidman is two posts in November 2025 on the official Israeli Embassy X (formerly Twitter) account. Neither carries Seidman’s name.
As Chargé D’Affaires, Seidman oversees the embassy’s official X and other social media accounts. DIRCO could easily have cut him diplomatic slack by addressing the messages in the “offending” posts.
Instead, it chose to axe the messenger.
The first post targets South Africa’s multimillion-rand lawsuit launched against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on a genocide charge in December 2023. That was just weeks after a genuine genocidal attack by the Iran-backed terror group Hamas against mainly civilian targets in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
That attack left 1200 dead, including children and babies, more than 6000 injured and more than 250 kidnapped and taken to Gaza as hostages. Hostages included infants, toddlers, young children and the elderly.
The post reads:
“Value for money? The South African Gov’t has thrown away R100 million attacking Israel at the ICJ – with another R500 million to be wasted next year. 0% of value for South Africans, 100% political theatre.”
The second post responds to Ramaphosa’s comment that “boycott politics don’t work.” He made it after US President Donald Trump’s decision not to attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November 2025.
The post calls the comment a “rare moment of wisdom and diplomatic clarity from President Ramaphosa,”adding: “We totally agree…”
Were those posts sarcastic? Yes. Unsubtle? Undoubtedly. Worthy of expulsion? Definitely not.
If sarcasm were a deportable offence, half of all diplomats on X would be back home by lunchtime.
The fact is that South Africa has made opposition to Israel a defining feature of its foreign-policy identity. It has downgraded relations, pursued its highly politicised ICJ case against Israel and aligned with extremists in the pro-Palestinian movement who increasingly move beyond policy critique into outright rejection of Israel’s moral standing as a state.
It remains deafeningly silent on the ongoing massacre of innocents, including many children in their teens, by its close ally, Iran.
Ramaphosa did call for “restraint on both sides” recently. That doesn’t cut much moral or diplomatic ice.
Close alignment with Tehran’s jihadist mullahs alone should have been sufficient for DIRCO to be politically circumspect when dealing with common enemies.
After all, it’s one thing to support best buddies going through tough times. It’s quite another to support them when they mass-murder their own people in the streets for the “crime” of publicly protesting against injustice and oppression.
The mullahs plaintively claim to have killed “only” 3116 citizens so far during the uprising, claiming that most were “terrorists”.
I can’t recall so many young, gorgeous, talented, cultured “terrorists” ever being slaughtered in broad daylight by a bunch of medieval-looking, Islamist extremists acting just like genocidal fanatics.
The closest I can come is the more than 300 beautiful young people attending a music festival for peace, who were among the more than 1200 civilians that Hamas tortured, slaughtered, beheaded, burnt alive and mass raped on October 7.
Hamas tried claiming that most concert-goers were its idea of “terrorists” – serving soldiers in Israel’s IDF. That proved nonsensical, as have so many of Hamas’s claims against Israel proved.
The estimated number of civilians massacred in the Iran uprising stands at more than 30,000, as cited by Time magazine in the US and The Guardian in the UK. That’s according to leaked hospital and security‑agency data, including a network of Iranian doctors whose hospital‑record tally of protest‑related deaths reached 30,304 up to January 8 to 9, 2026.
Hundreds of thousands more have been injured, many grievously, or are “missing”.
The numbers are climbing into the stratosphere.
One wonders how high they must go before the ANC finds the moral backbone to sever ties with its ally.
The trigger to Seidman’s exit most likely lies in the invitation from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to South Africa’s AbaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, to visit Israel in December 2025.
The king is a cousin of former president Nelson Mandela and leader of the Thembu people in the Eastern Cape. In Israel, he met Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and other officials. He learned of advances in Israel’s technology, agriculture and water management.
His visit did not go down well with the ANC back home.
Nor did the reciprocal visit in late January 2026, by senior Israeli officials, accompanied by embassy staff, where they met the king and more than 50 traditional leaders in Mthatha.
They openly discussed potential assistance with water infrastructure, healthcare and education. They visited hospitals and engaged universities and community leaders.
There was no fanfare. No ribbon-cutting. No ANC branding.
Israel framed the visits as building “people-to-people” ties, and a humanitarian initiative to supply potable water in an impoverished region.
The poor in the Eastern Cape saw Israel as offering longed-for relief.
The King’s spokesperson agreed. She called Seidman’s expulsion:
“an attack on his people and an attempt to prevent assistance that the government has struggled and failed to provide.
“Our relationship with the Israeli Embassy is one we hold very close to our heart, as they have managed to help our people in a way that the South African government has not been able to do.”
That sentence alone should have prompted national introspection. Predictably, ANC leaders were outwardly wrathful.
DIRCO and the provincial leadership called the king’s support for Israeli assistance “sinister”. ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula called it a “betrayal” and “surprising departure” from South Africa’s solidarity with Palestinians.
Mbalula invoked the exile and liberation legacy of the king’s father, the late King Sabata Dalindyebo, to rebuke the son – as though inherited struggle credentials, not present-day responsibility, should determine who may bring water to the Eastern Cape
Support for Seidman’s expulsion has come from other elevated sources, including civil society “royalty”, among them Gift of the Givers founder and CEO Dr Imtiaz Sooliman.
Sooliman is not merely a humanitarian actor on the world philanthropy stage. He is among the most politically connected figures in South Africa’s NGO landscape. He boasts long-standing access to senior government leaders, as photos on his charity’s website and Facebook page routinely show.
Presidents praise him. Ministers consult him. His voice carries influence well beyond global disaster zones.
In June 2025, Ramaphosa appointed Sooliman a member of the loftily titled Eminent Persons Group to guide and champion South Africa’s National Dialogue initiative.
Sooliman operates in a fertile, political environment at the highest levels. His ecosystem includes former DIRCO head Naledi Pandor, now head of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, current DIRCO director-general Zayne Dangor and former South African ambassador to the US Ibrahim Rasool.
It is premised on broad-based, pre-existing hostility to Israel. It pervades the ANC, as Mbalula himself has openly acknowledged.
Sooliman publicly endorsed DIRCO’s decision with a post on his charity’s Facebook page. It reads:
“We commend DIRCO and the South African Government for taking a decisive, principled stand. As South Africans, we reject injustice, occupation, and the killing of civilians, and we oppose policies that result in the suffering and starvation of innocent people. Accountability, human rights, and international law must prevail.”
That’s a striking statement, not least because Gift of the Givers has for years been directly involved in disaster response and water and drought relief in South Africa and globally, often stepping in where states failed.
His record gives him unusual credibility to separate humanitarian necessity from geopolitical hostility.
Instead of being a moderating influence, Sooliman added fuel to fire of anti-Israel sentiment. He helped to collapse a discussion about water, healthcare and poverty into heated ideological confrontation.
That collapse quickly spawned public sloganeering by extremist anti-Israel lobbyists, riling up their base to reject “Israel’s bloody aid” and “bloody water”. Their ire aimed predictably at “Zionists” – the anti-Israel lobby’s code word for Jews.
It raises questions about the extent to which such framing has contributed to the broader political climate of over-reaction that caused Seidman’s expulsion.
DIRCO’s decision did not emerge in a vacuum. It unfolded within an environment primed to treat Israel not merely as uniquely illegitimate but also “evil” and, therefore, undeserving of diplomatic latitude.
Context gives meaning to actions. Expelling a diplomat for sarcasm, humanitarian engagement and inconvenient assistance looks less like principled diplomacy and more like ideological enforcement. Especially when set against a selective moral compass.
In a country where foreign policy, NGO advocacy and ruling-party ideology increasingly merge, it is reasonable to examine how moral narratives gain traction and shape outcomes.
Undeserved criticism risks shading into delegitimisation and, at its edges, something darker.
It makes South Africa a more dangerous place for Jews!
It leaves a question hanging in the ether:
When expert help is available to relieve the suffering of millions of South Africans in impoverished rural areas, why would anyone want to deny access to it?
About the writer:
Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
