South African MPs Seek to Criminalize Speech Defending Israel From Apartheid Allegations

A South African political party seeks to punish key defenders of Israel. Pretoria’s Al Jama-ah party submitted a legal claim on June 2 arguing that members of parliament engaged in unlawful support for apartheid by dismissing the allegation that Israel is guilty of it. The case will test just how far South Africa has gone — and will go — to criminalize speech that favors the Jewish state.

The initiative was prompted by a visit of a delegation of South African parliamentarians to Israel on a fact-finding mission in early April. They toured the sites of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacres and met with Israeli leaders. The delegation subsequently “expressed frustration that South Africa’s foreign policy has been so hostile” to Israel, according to Daniel Jackobi, director of the South African Friends of Israel, which organized the trip.

Harassment Campaign Targets MPs Who Visited Israel

On May 7, protesters surrounded a hall hosting an event that featured MP Emma Louise Powell, a member of the delegation. The aggressive demonstrations caused Powell to fear for her life and flee the venue under police protection. A week later, a parliamentarian from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party called for a parliamentary investigation of the delegation.

Another trip attendee, MP Katherine Christie, was verbally abused outside the parliament when fellow parliamentarians, including an Al Jama-ah member, sicced a mob on her.

From Harassment to Criminal Complaints

At a Cape Town police station on June 2, Ganief Hendricks, head of the Al Jama-ah Party, initiated charges against nine of the trip attendees, accusing them of supporting apartheid. A day later, an Al Jama-ah politician submitted a motion requesting that the parliament ban the Israeli flag.

An Al Jama-ah press release called the fact-finding mission to Israel “an activity of apartheid and a crime against humanity,” and erroneously claimed that the parliamentarians — by declaring “what is happening in Israel is nothing like apartheid” — are violating the Rome Statute. The motion is part of a campaign to intimidate members of parliament going against the anti-Israel grain in South Africa.

Last year, Hendricks called for the arrest of South African Jewish pro-Israel leaders. Ironically, in March, Hendricks’s party falsely accused the South African Jewish Board of Deputies of curtailing the freedom of speech of anti-Israel activists simply by monitoring and reporting their activity.

Hendricks’s and Al Jama-ah’s Antisemitism and Support for Violence

Al Jama-ah, launched in 2007, commands two seats out of 400 in South Africa’s parliament. The ANC added the small Islamic party to the coalition-led government of national unity and made Hendricks the deputy minister of social development. This puts him in a position of power over the country’s nongovernmental organizations, which include a network of pro-Hamas groups.

On the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s atrocities in Israel, Hendricks said, “I call [on] the parliaments in South Africa to arm their resistance to Palestine. I invited Hamas to parliament.” He added, “I invited the ANC to have tea with them.” Hendricks went on to say that he traveled to Iran and “asked Iran to give weapons” and that Israel “needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.”

In November 2023, Al Jama-ah member and Johannesburg city councilor Thapelo Amad posted a picture of himself holding an assault rifle with the caption, “We stand with Hamas.”

Criminalizing Speech in Support for Israel Should Result in Sanctions

While Hendricks openly calls for arming Hamas and eliminating Israel, his party is seeking to criminalize speech in support of the Jewish state. South Africa’s court system should dismiss this case outright, and the United States should levy sanctions against any political entity in South Africa backing the party’s objective.

In February, President Donald Trump highlighted how “South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.” He should go one step further and sanction those responsible.

David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from the author and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.