By R.W. JOHNSON
There is apparently discussion in Trumpist circles in Washington of expelling South Africa from the G20. It is pointed out that South Africa has the smallest GDP of any member and that many countries who are not G20 members actually have far greater economic weight than South Africa. What this points to is that South Africa was included merely in order to have token African representation. This is no doubt an alarming thought for Pretoria but more alarming still is the suggestion, also made in Trumpist circles, that South Africa might be found guilty of state-sponsored terrorism, which would automatically disqualify it not merely from the G20 but from all manner of other bodies as well.
What is the evidence for such an accusation? One might start with the figure of Ibrahim Rasool, who was re-selected as South Africa’s ambassador in Washington in 2025, after an earlier tour during 2010-2015. Rasool, an ANC Muslim who had earlier been premier of the Western Cape, was a great admirer of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas. When Yassin was assassinated in 2004, Rasool described him as “one of the greatest inspirations” and prayed that all Palestinians would “stand up and fight under the flag of Islam”. In 2007 when Hamas dignitaries visited South Africa Rasool was their key contact. He hosted Mohammed Nazzal, a senior member of the Hamas politburo, later described by the US as a facilitator of terrorist activities who played a key role in transferring money and goods into Gaza.
In 2015 Rasool played a key role in an initiative aimed at uniting Hamas and Fatah. This earned him the admiration of Ismael Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, who presented Rasool with a signed Palestinian scarf. When Haniyeh was assassinated in July 2024 prayers were held for him at Rasool’s mosque in Cape Town where the Imam declared “May Allah liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestine in its entirety from the filth of the Jews.”
Throughout this period Rasool was a close associate and supporter of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. In 2020 the Iranian regime listed Rasool as a speaker at the South African Al-Quds Day – which celebrates Hezbollah and its “resistance” to Israel. At this event Rasool joined with the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Zarif, Zahra Mostafavi (the daughter of Ayatollah Khomeini), Khaled al-Ghodoumi (the Hamas representative in Iran) and Nasser Abousharif, the representative in Tehran of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
For many years and particularly during his first tour as ambassador to the US, Rasool has been involved with the SAFA network in Virginia, in the USA, an Islamist grouping of NGOs, think tanks, banks and educational institutions, which has drawn considerable FBI attention because of its support for Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda and, in particular, its financing of Islamic Jihad.
This led to the deportation from the US of the notorious Islamic Jihad financier, Al-Arian who then set up the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) in Turkey. Rasool has remained a key supporter of Al-Arian. Interestingly, Rasool’s organisation, the World for All Foundation, though it claims to be based in South Africa, is actually registered at a SAFA address in Virginia. The WFAF frequently partners with the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), the key clerical body of the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamist extremists of all kinds speak at their joint events.
Rasool has strong connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. When, in 2013, the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt sent a delegation to the US the delegates went straight from the airport to Rasool’s residence in Washington.
During Rasool’s first tour as South Africa’s ambassador to the US he devoted a great deal of his time and energy to organising Islamist-run American Muslim associations. Rasool is also active in international Islamist circles and has strong links to the Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami which was responsible for the mass murder of Bangladeshis during the 1971 war of independence. Indeed, so active was Rasool in international Islamist circles that his official duties as South Africa’s ambassador often seemed to take second place. Remarkably, the South African authorities seemed happy with this.
Given this record, many commentators warned that Rasool was a most unwise choice as ambassador in 2025 for he was unlikely to be palatable to the Trump administration. All such warnings were ignored for the fact is that South Africa’s foreign ministry, DIRCO – which had chosen Rasool – was itself hardly neutral on the subject of Islamist influence. In fact Rasool was almost immediately expelled from the US in disgrace after he had most undiplomatically described President Trump as a white supremacist.
The fact that DIRCO had strong Islamist leanings derived from the ANC’s struggle history. During its long years of exile the ANC moved considerably to the Left. At the same time the ANC established fraternal relations with a number of revolutionary Third World movements including the PLO, Gadaafi’s Libya, the Algerian FLN and the Muslim radicals of South Yemen. In general this fitted with the ANC’s anti-Western bias. In effect the ANC followed Soviet policy, which treated both Israel and South Africa as pariah states. The Iranian revolution of 1979 was also strongly welcomed by the ANC as a major blow against American imperialism.
All these movements above, as also the Ayatollah’s regime in Iran, were fanatically anti-Israeli and the ANC accepted that too, partly because of the friendly relations Israel maintained with apartheid South Africa but also because it regarded Zionism as a kin-phenomenon to white settler colonialism.
The accusation that many of these movements were terrorist counted for nothing with the ANC. It prided itself on being a revolutionary movement, as its commitment to armed struggle proved. During the Struggle it too had been accused of terrorism and it regarded such accusations as merely a way in which the counter-revolution tries to defame revolutionaries.
In addition, of course, there have always been influential Muslim figures within the Congress movement such as Yusuf Dadoo, the Pahad brothers, Ebrahim Patel, Ahmed Kathrada, Enver Surty, Abdul Minty, Ebrahim Ebrahim, Ismael and Fatima Meer, Farouk Meer, Imam Solomon and many others. The Muslim Indian minority in Natal had particular weight since many of its members were well educated and some were wealthy. Many of these ANC Muslims were not particularly religious but, there was always a fanatical Islamist minority within the broader Muslim community. The International Islamic Centre in Durban, for example, was directly endowed by Osama bin-Laden. And the Indian community itself was a small world so even many of the non-religious had Islamist contacts.
Inevitably, the Muslims within the ANC reinforced the party’s opposition to Israel and ANC Muslims tended to become interlocutors for the ANC in its relations with the Muslim world. This in turn saw a strong and continuous Muslim presence in South Africa’s Department for International Relations and Co-operation (DIRCO). Aziz Pahad, Thabo Mbeki’s trusted lieutenant, served as deputy minister at DIRCO from 1994 to 2008, ensuring that even during Mandela’s presidency, Mbeki always controlled foreign policy. Once Mbeki became President, Aziz’s brother Essop acted as Mbeki’s enforcer and, as Minister in the Presidency, was often regarded as the second most powerful man in the country.
Another ANC Muslim family, the Dangors, also played a powerful role in DIRCO. Yasmin Dangor, more generally known as Jesse Duarte, acted as personal assistant to both Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, then served in the Gauteng provincial government until forced out due to a scandal. She then served as South Africa’s ambassador to Mozambique from 1999-2003. She was the chief operations officer in Jacob Zuma’s presidential office and then served as the ANC’s spokesperson, its deputy secretary-general and acting secretary-general and thus part of the ANC top five who ruled the country. She was well known for her extreme hostility to the media and, like all the Dangors, she was passionately opposed to Israel which she publicly compared to Nazi Germany.
Both Duarte’s brothers, Zane and Mohammed Dangor, work in DIRCO. Zane is, indeed, seen by many as the dominating figure at DIRCO. He was Special Adviser to the Minister first to Lindiwe Sisulu, then to Naledi Pandor and now to Ronald Lamola. He also serves as Chief Operations Officer, an interim representative to the AU and, from 2022, also as Director-General of DIRCO.
Zane Dangor has had a poor relationship with South Africa’s Jewish community. When the SA Jewish Report carried a critical article about the ANC’s decision to downgrade diplomatic relations between Israel and South Africa, Dangor attacked it as “libellous” and “anti-human rights” and referred to “Israel’s most serious international crimes”. Dangor angrily condemned Israel’s attacks on Palestinian targets but made no mention of attacks on Israel by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
DIRCO’s hostility to Israel is strongly supported by Mandla Mandela, a Tembu chief, former ANC MP and grandson of Nelson. Mandla converted to Islam to enable him to marry a Muslim wife. Mandla even blames the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Israel, together with neo-Nazis and NATO. He supported the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023 and attended the funeral of the Hamas leader, Ismael Haniyeh. In 2024 he was denied a visa to enter the UK on account of his ”support for Hamas”.
The plight of Palestinian refugees is, of course, an entirely respectable humanitarian cause but the ANC tends to conflate its humanitarian concerns with full-on support for Hamas and Hezbollah. This was made obvious during its court action accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice, launched by Naledi Pandor, the DIRCO Minister from 2019 to June 2024. Pandor had converted to Islam in order to marry Sharif Pandor and has all the seal of a convert. She made no secret of her sympathies for Hamas and during the ICJ action Hamas and Hezbollah representatives toured South Africa where they were treated as VIPs.
Moreover, shortly before court proceedings at the ICJ began South Africa’s legal team was whisked away to meet secretly with Palestinian terrorist activists, a meeting arranged by DIRCO. This poses many questions. How, after all, would Hamas and Hezbollah fighters get to the Hague? Quite probably on false Iranian passports, which in turn suggests that this meeting was arranged in collaboration with Iran. But it is also perfectly illustrative of the fact that while South Africa was putting its case to the ICJ supposedly on humanitarian grounds in fact the ANC conflates that with actively supporting Hamas/Hezbollah.
Naledi Pandor, the DIRCO minister, and her husband Sharif Pandor, both have strong links to Russia and Iran. Sharif Pandor is a big businessman, controlling many companies in manganese, cobalt and uranium mining, the Risco Group, Falaah Farms and Nkwe Platinum. Pandor was involved with Brett Kebble and his business activities have attracted accusations of scandal and false accounting.
However, the whole area of business connections between South Africa and Iran is extremely hazy because those who participate in it have to cover their tracks because of US and other sanctions against Iran. Officially trade between Iran and South Africa is minimal but the US has alleged that considerable sums have been routed from South Africa to support Hamas and Hezbollah. Indeed a South African company, One Vision Investments, which has five offices in Cape Town and is run by Nazem Ahmed, is specifically listed by the US as a financier of Hezbollah and Ahmed has an American Wanted notice on his head.
Naledi Pandor is a wealthy woman. Continuously an ANC cabinet minister for twenty years, she has three houses registered in the names of other family members, thus avoiding government rules against such multiple ownership. And despite government rules limiting cabinet members to the ownership of two cars whose price must not exceed 70% of a minister’s income, Naledi had five luxury cars.
As minister for science and technology, Naledi had visited Iran in 2017 but inevitably her trip to Iran in October 2023 attracted more attention. It triggered accusations that Iran may have financed South Africa’s approach to the ICJ and may also have been responsible for a miraculous recovery in the ANC’s financial health at the same time. Certainly, Pretoria’s relations with Iran seem to be extremely cordial, with South Africa pressing strongly (and successfully) for Iranian membership of BRICS.
It says no little that in planning her approach to the ICJ one of the small group Naledi Pandor consulted was Ronnie Kasrils who had publicly supported the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel which killed some 1200 civilians and included rape, torture and people burnt alive and another 251 taken hostage. Kasrils described the atrocity as follows: “A brilliant, spectacular guerrilla warfare attack. They swept on them and they killed them and damn good. I was so pleased.” This too is a good example of the simple-minded way in which many ANC activists support any form of violence as “revolutionary”. For Kasrils this major atrocity was “a brilliant guerrilla warfare attack”.
Kasrils’ views were clearly not unacceptable to Pandor who had embarrassed President Ramaphosa by having a phone conversation with the Hamas leader, Ismael Haniyeh shortly after October 7, quite possibly in order to congratulate him on the attack. Pandor also declared that any South African Jews found guilty of having served with the Israeli Defence Force would be arrested – though in fact no law exists to forbid that. Nonetheless, Pandor’s declaration made it clear that the South African government strongly supports one side in the conflict. Since then there have been accusations that South Africa – presumably this means particular people in DIRCO – had prior knowledge of Hamas’s planned attack of October 7.
This has been formally denied. The problem is, of course, that South Africa’s relations with Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are shrouded in secrecy, though representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah visited South Africa in the wake of October 7 and even spoke at several meetings at universities where they received vehement support from Palestinian sympathisers. Some South African universities have adopted strong anti-Israel resolutions, which have already had considerable financial consequences: both Wits and UCT have suffered large-scale damage in lost grants from funders with hundreds of jobs at stake. In addition, of course, the cuts in US aid to South Africa have cost the country some $400 million a year – and South Africa’s anti-Israel position is a prime driver of negative US attitudes to South Africa.
The fact that adoption of the pro-Hamas cause has already had such serious consequences has only strengthened the secrecy surrounding South Africa’s relations with Iran and its proxies. What is publicly known is that South Africa’s MTN is one of the biggest investors in Iran, owning 49% of one of the main telecoms there. MTN has been accused of paying bribes to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and facilitating terror attacks in Iran and Afghanistan. Ramaphosa is a past chairman of MTN and its present chairman, Mcebisi Jonas, now faces the embarrassment of a US law suit under the Anti-Terrorism Act in which it is alleged that MTN’s collaboration with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was responsible for the deaths of many US servicemen in Iraq.
None of this proves that South Africa has been directly sponsoring terrorism, though the consistent pattern of pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iranian contacts and behaviour also suggests that this is far from impossible. So much is hidden from view.
It is remarkable that militant Islamists regard South Africa as one of the strongest supporters of their cause, ahead of many Arab nations. Only 3% of South African’s population are Muslims, after all. Equally remarkable, though, is the way that the ANC has been content to see DIRCO become an Islamist stronghold. During the negotiations for the GNU the ANC went to great lengths to ensure that the DA was kept well away from DIRCO. One can see why: that department is the keeper of no end of political and financial secrets.
FEATURED IMAGE: Wearing a Keffiyeh, Naledi Pandor, then still Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, delivers the second annual Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 8 May 2024. DIRCO South Africa.