SA firmly committed to ICJ genocide case – Ramaphosa

SA is forging ahead with its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) despite reports that the US is being lobbied to pressure the country into dropping its case. Israeli diplomats have been instructed to lobby members of the US Congress to use methods, including possibly curtailing trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) to pressure SA to drop its case. But President Cyril Ramaphosa and International Relations & Co-operation Minister Ronald Lamola have made it clear that Pretoria will continue to pursue the case. Ramaphosa told journalists on Friday that SA has not been approached by any country to drop the case. He said that the intention is to present evidence of genocide before the ICJ. ‘We are standing firm ... we have not seen any reason why we should halt, stop and do away with our case, and we have not been asked to do so,’ Ramaphosa said. He added that should SA be approached, it was willing to ‘hear the rationale’. ‘Preparations are under way to present what they call the memorial, a huge tome of hundreds and hundreds of pages,’ he said. The Sunday Times has established that the government is in possession of information that indicates intense lobbying by Israel in the US.

Lamola, who is in the US to strengthen relations, told the congressional black caucus that the country should respect SA’s sovereignty when it comes to geopolitics. ‘We appreciate the decades and long support for Africa’s priorities, including through Pepfar (President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) and Agoa, which are signature bipartisan programmes that have been very impactful and well received by the people of the continent,’ said Lamola. ‘Similarly, we would also want to see value-add by investors from the US in our country, not only a relationship of extraction of minerals but value-add in our continent (by) helping us with industrialisation, with manufacturing, with modernising and leapfrogging our country into a new modern society. The Sunday Times reports that he said SA remains ‘open to being persuaded’ on several geopolitical issues and that ‘we are hopeful that we can also persuade the US on a number of issues in various multilateral platforms and this becomes a relationship of mutual respect and of mutual beneficiation’. Speaking at the same event, former assistant US trade representative for Africa Rosa Whitaker said it was wrong for a developmental business model such as Agoa to be weaponised by the US to pressure some countries into bending to its pressures.