But unfortunately, that strength is balanced by a weakness. And the weakness is profiteers. And there are profiteers across the BRICS. And South Africa’s profiteers include an arms merchant who’s a bastion of the Zionist establishment – Ivor Ichikowitz – and he’s had deals with Elbit, deals that supply fascistic governments in Latin America – Ecuador’s army – with not only military vehicles, but Elbit souping them up for communications. And that continues. He’s also – Ichikowitz – supplying the Israeli, well, the Jewish people’s spiritual support, which is tefillin, which is a leather strip that you bind around your arm, with a verse from the Torah in a small box on your head. That’s what this guy Ivor Ichikowitz, who is an arms merchant and an ANC member, and, as recently as mid-2023, the number one donor to the ANC, as the public records at least have shown. And that means, when the genocide began in October 2023, Ichikowitz was schizophrenic and split. And instead of still supporting the ANC, he has come out very strongly – especially in articles in 2024 and statements the whole time – against South Africa’s support for Palestine.

Now, that’s just one angle – the arms dealing. And then we have Rheinmetall, which is the German company that owns big chunks of Denel, South Africa’s state-owned arms company. Are weapons being made in South Africa – in Somerset West or in Centurion – are they going up to not only to Rheinmetall in Germany, but onward, including to Israel? It’s an open question. We’re not sure. We have a very ineffectual National Conventional Arms Control Committee meant to look this over – and they’re not doing well. There are a few other arms dealers that we’re curious about – the extent to which, certainly historically, Armscor and Israel, and indeed going back to the 1970s nuclear collaboration.

The other big problem, though, is coal – which is very open. Because we can track the coal-bearing ships that go from Richards Bay all the way up to Hadera port, and to some extent Ashdod. At Hadera, there is the Orot Rabin power station. At Ashdod, it’s the Rutenberg station. And those are supplying Israel with about 20% of its grid-based energy. And that’s a very important part of the supply that the Israel Defense Forces would use to prosecute that genocide or to maintain apartheid. And it would therefore be against the International Court of Justice ruling in July – that was actually codified by the United Nations General Assembly in September – that says: don’t do electricity supply or any other goods crucial for the apartheid, the land grabbing of the West Bank too, not just the genocide of Gaza.

So we’ve got a couple of, let’s say, screaming contradictions. And it’s even more embarrassing, I think, for South Africa, because President Ramaphosa used to be the main partner of the main company that sells coal to Israel – both from South Africa, but also from Colombia. And they’ve continued that, even into this year, in spite of the Colombian president telling them not to.

And that company – Glencore – is notorious for bribing African governments. They were not prosecuted for the activities in South Africa, but across the rest of Africa, the prosecutions, including in the US and Britain, have shown that this is a very corrupt company. And they have chosen – particularly because their predecessor, Xstrata, was doing deals with the African Rainbow Minerals chief executive, Patrice Motsepe, who happens to be President Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law.

Now we have found – and a protest in early April confirmed this – 23% of Glencore’s ownership is of the mines in question in Mpumalanga that get the coal out and get them coal over to Israel. That would be profits to Patrice Motsepe, we estimate, out of about a $5 million profit – that is the net income after the costs – for each of the 177,000 tons of coal that are put on the ship and shipped out to Israel, Patrice Motsepe makes about a million dollars. So these are the sorts of, let’s say, contradictions that just scream out, and that we hope more pressure will allow us to resolve – resolve in favor of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel.

A repeat performance is most worrying to progressives here, in large part because South Africa’s Richards Bay bulk minerals port has become – since August – the world’s main terminal for exporting coal to Israel, which depends on the Orot Rabin and Rutenberg power stations for nearly 20% of its energy grid.

It is to be expected that Trump will go on the offensive against the South African filing of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case against Israel. Trump is a proponent of Israel’s mass murder and illegal settlements, calling predecessor Joe Biden a “very bad Palestinian” during a debate last June, for not sufficiently helping Netanyahu to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza.

But instead of helping to build the global movement against Israel by highlighting Trump’s threats, Ramaphosa’s new Ambassador to Washington Ebrahim Rasool – formerly part of the ruling party’s leftwing currents – let slip in an interview this week: “We need to put away the [Palestine-solidarity] megaphone now. And the president’s words were, it is now sub judice... I understand the need to completely recalibrate...that’s the art of the deal. It is about framing the messages in particular ways that make South Africa an ally [of Trump].”

Some might be surprised at this betrayal, including Ramaphosa’s nonsensical sub judice posture. Yet beyond its important ideological advocacy megaphone used at the Hague international courts, the Pretoria government has barely lifted a finger for Palestine.