South Africa, Zionism, and the Moral Collapse of a Post-Colonial Dream.
Unlike in the United States or Western Europe—where anti-Zionism thrives under the camouflage of academic theory, progressive rhetoric, and elite institutional tolerance—in South Africa, it has been raised to the level of state ideology. Here, it is not simply tolerated but codified, sanctified, and weaponized. The government itself has assumed the mantle once held by pan-Arab nationalists, Soviet ideologues, and both Sunni and Shiite jihadists: that of the determined enemy of the Jewish state. And in all of these cases, we know how the story ends—when Jews become the obsession of the state, there are soon no Jews left.
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the exodus of its Jews to Israel was not a coincidence. It was a consequence. Anti-Zionism, as an ideological virus, made the environment uninhabitable. The same was the case across the Arab world. The Jews fled. The lesson, though rarely spoken aloud, is clear: anti-Zionism is not the sign of a healthy society. It is a symptom of civilizational failure. A society that turns its gaze outward in search of scapegoats has already surrendered the inner moral struggle of self-renewal. In this sense, South Africa is not merely an isolated case; it is a harbinger.
What played out in American universities in 2024—the slogans, the chants, the encampments—was not unprecedented. It was rehearsed a decade earlier on South African campuses. In 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, students across the country, led by figures like Thapelo Amad, openly aligned themselves with Hamas. Amad, who would later serve as mayor of Johannesburg, proudly posted a photo of himself holding an assault rifle with the words “We stand with Hamas” just hours after the October 7 massacre. He is not alone. Fatima Hajaig, who once stood before a crowd and claimed that the U.S. and Europe were “in the hands of Jewish money,” held the title of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Here in the Southern tip of Africa, the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric for the benefit of political power has been swift, methodical, and rewarded.
A few weeks before the Hamas attacks, I was asked, “What’s the fastest way to stoke antisemitism today?” In retrospect, the answer is brutal in its clarity: massacre Jews. Nothing has done more to inflame hatred of Jews than the worst atrocity committed against them since the Holocaust. And yet, because those Jews were Israeli—because they were sovereign—those who raped and butchered them are now “freedom fighters,” their crimes transformed by the alchemy of anti-imperial ideology into acts of holy resistance.
To understand this perversion, we must also examine the unique position of South African Jewry. For much of the 20th century, South African Jews were ardent Zionists—not in spite of apartheid, but because of it. As Afrikaner nationalism began to dominate South African identity, Jews saw in Israel not only a homeland, but a surrogate national ethos—one that embraced them when their own state did not. The best book ever written on the subject, The Jews in South Africa (not of South Africa), tells us all we need to know about their precarious belonging. Their Zionism was born from alienation.
But that changed with the collapse of Apartheid. South Africa is no longer ruled by Afrikaners. It is now, at least symbolically, the model post-colonial state—the global conscience of the oppressed. The reality, of course, is far darker: a country crippled by corruption, racked by violence, plagued by xenophobic mobs targeting African migrants, and entangled in alliances with some of the world’s most notorious regimes. It routinely welcomes war criminals under indictment by the International Criminal Court while simultaneously weaponizing the International Court of Justice as a tool of lawfare against Israel. Its foreign policy reads like a wish list drafted in Tehran. It has repeatedly shielded Putin’s war in Ukraine at the United Nations. And yet, none of this dents its mythic image. In the imagination of the global left, South Africa remains a moral superpower.
That is precisely why it has become the perfect propaganda arm for the Islamic Republic, Hamas, and Hezbollah. And so it is not surprising that Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, now the head of Africa4Palestine, traveled to Tehran in 2022 to accept the Islamic Human Rights Award. Standing before the clerics of the regime, he praised Khomeini’s revolution as one of the greatest defeats of modern imperialism. Shortly before that, a billboard went up in Pretoria, the political capital of South Africa. It featured Nelson Mandela, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the Dome of the Rock. Beneath them, in bold letters, the words: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” It was an open declaration of ideological alignment—between the legacy of the anti-apartheid struggle and the modern jihad against Israel.
The tragedy of South African Jewry is that Zionism—the very identity that once dignified their participation in a society that kept them at arm’s length—has now become the reason for their rejection. Once, it marked their moral clarity. Now, it is their political curse.
If anything, South Africa serves two enduring lessons—one internal, and one external. The first is a warning to the West: hand the reins of political power to the progressive front—be it Corbyn in Britain or Omar in America—and South Africa is not your outlier; it is your future. A nation once celebrated for its peaceful transition now openly aligns itself with jihadist regimes, demonizes Jewish sovereignty, and institutionalizes antisemitism as statecraft—all under the banner of social justice. What was once fringe rhetoric is now state policy. What was once student activism is now foreign policy.
The second lesson is for South African Jews themselves. The sooner they come to terms with the reality that they are no longer part of the moral consensus they once helped shape, the sooner they will stop clinging to the fantasy of liberal belonging. History has taught us, with bitter consistency, that when Jews imagine themselves as guests in someone else’s story—grateful, hopeful, indispensable even—it is only a matter of time before the host decides how the story ends. And in South Africa, the ink is already drying.