Israeli impunity: SA leads global fight for justice

Being South African can be depressing sometimes. The tremendous highs of our world-beating rugby and cricket teams show what we can do. But our economy doesn’t grow, mass unemployment continues, our cities decline and we continue to live in constant fear of crime. The lack of political will to take on and solve even our most basic problems is depressing.

But, on the global stage, our government has emerged as the most principled international actor in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Now that Israel has extended its rampage into Iran, international law is under sustained assault from Israel and its backers in the West and their local proxies here at home. The urgency of the crisis generated by Israel’s impunity is rapidly escalating. 

As Zane Dangor, the courageous and deeply principled director general of the department of international relations and cooperation, recently observed, Israel’s attack on Iran “places the world in grave peril”. That peril has now escalated following the US bombing of Iran.

South Africa’s decision to file a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in December 2023 marked a bold and brave assertion of international law by a Global South country, rooted in South Africa’s own history of apartheid and its constitutional commitment to human rights. The court later found that South Africa had presented a plausible case and ordered Israel to take immediate measures to prevent acts of genocide, placing legal and moral pressure on Tel Aviv and its allies.

South Africa’s approach to the court resulted in intense pressure from the United States and the strident and often hysterical pro-Western lobby at home, a lobby that has frequently floated conspiracy theories for which it can provide no evidence. For this lobby, Israel is an outpost of the (white) West and is therefore entitled to engage in the mass murder of civilians deemed to be part of the barbarous (and not white) hordes outside the West.

Principled critics of Israel and the wider West have repeatedly been slandered as antisemites or dupes of Russia or China. South Africa’s approach to the International Court of Justice was said to have been made as a result of a bribe paid to the ANC by Iran. No evidence has ever been produced to support this wild allegation. 

But while the pro-West lobby at home damages the integrity of our public sphere and has seriously damaged the credibility of parts of our media, the real threat to South Africa came from the US. BizNews is irritating but the US government has real power to damage our country and its people.

This is one reason why the formation of The Hague Group on 31 January 2025 was such an important breakthrough. It brought together nine states from the Global South — Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa — with the aim of implementing binding legal and diplomatic measures to hold Israel accountable for its persistent violations of international law. It was a significant step forward in the defence of international law and it meant that South Africa was no longer isolated on the world stage.

Now, in a pivotal development, this coalition will convene an Emergency Ministerial Conference in Bogotá, Colombia, on 15 and 16 July 2025, at the ministry of foreign affairs. The meeting will be co-hosted by South Africa and the progressive government of Colombia, led by Gustavo Petro.

A particularly significant development is that a large number of foreign ministers and senior officials will attend from far beyond the founding members of the Hague Group. Governments from across Asia, Africa and Latin America have confirmed their participation. This signals that the coalition in support of Palestine and international law is growing, not only in moral stature, but in geopolitical weight. The meeting is becoming a focal point for a much wider movement of Global South states, along with some others, ready to act against impunity and in defence of international law.

The Bogotá meeting is not just symbolic — it has a detailed and operational agenda. As stated in the joint announcement, the Emergency Ministerial Conference will “centre the legal obligations of states, as determined by the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (July 2024), to stop all actions that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and to support full Palestinian self-determination. 

Attendees will also work towards the announcement of further “concrete actions to enforce international law through coordinated state action — to end the genocide and ensure justice and accountability”.

The Bogotá meeting will be a significant turning point in international diplomacy. It will assemble ministers and high-level delegations from across Latin America, Africa and Asia to forge a united front. Central to the agenda is enforcing rulings from the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court — notably the former’s July 2024 advisory opinion finding Israel’s occupation illegal and the latter’s November 2024 arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials on war crimes charges.

For the first time in the post-Cold War era, Global South governments are organising not only around development or trade, but around justice and accountability at a global scale. This isn’t solely about Palestine; it’s about defending the idea that human lives everywhere have equal worth and that all states are answerable under law. This is a direct challenge to the idea that Israel and the US should continue to be granted impunity for their illegal actions.

To sustain the momentum, the Hague Group is building political infrastructure — rotating co-chairs, permanent liaisons and a follow-up secretariat. This will not be a one-off summit; it’s the beginning of a durable movement for justice enforcement.

We must not be naive, though. There will be backlash. At home, Tony Leon will write a sneering opinion piece. BizNews will circulate more conspiracy theories. Frans Cronje will issue dark warnings of the economic costs of thinking for ourselves. Peter Fabricius will write a story about some senator in the US threatening to isolate us economically. William Gumede will say that we need to “reset” relations with Israel. There will be another Western funded pseudo-academic study claiming that South Africans are critical of the West as a result of Russian and Chinese disinformation.

But all this noise is not the real issue. The real issue is that building principled solidarity among countries in the Global South is a direct threat to the impunity of Israel and it will be met with a vicious backlash carried out via the media and various international institutions. 

We cannot back down in the face of the genocide and ongoing warmongering by Israel, backed by the US, Germany, the United Kingdom and other Western countries. We need to build solidarity across the Global South and with countries in the West willing to take principled positions against genocide and warmongering and for peace, justice and international law.

South Africa is taking the lead on this and, working with the progressive government in Colombia, is making a major intervention in international relations. Here, our government is doing the right thing — and we should say so clearly, while not letting up on our criticism of its broader failures.

Dr Imraan Buccus is senior research associate at ASRI and research fellow at the University of the Free State.