South Africa has no right to lecture Israel

As South Africa presented its case accusing Israel of genocide to the International Court of Justice, the presence of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in and around the Hague court gave a flavour of the calibre of those willing this case on.

It was predictable that the South African government’s championing of this cause would ignite the ardour of the left. Quoting Nelson Mandela, the Labour MP Zarah Sultana took to X (formerly Twitter) to say with certainty that South Africa’s case against Israel was ‘devastating’.

The African National Congress (ANC), which has exercised an unbroken monopoly on power in South Africa since the end of white-minority rule in the mid-1990s, continues to hold a certain type of westerner in thrall. Their imagining of South Africa likely fails to extend beyond the feelgood parameters of the film Invictus and the opening ceremony of the 2010 football World Cup.