Fact Check — Did Iran fund South Africa’s approach to the ICJ over Israel? (2024)

This is a difficult claim to fact-check, as will be seen, but it’s an important one because it has been repeated by some fairly high-profile public figures and has found quite a bit of traction on social media.

We’ve also been besieged by emails from Daily Maverick readers asking us if this claim is true.

The allegation is essentially: The ANC, which for years has been teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, announced in early January that it had managed to stabilise its finances. It didn’t really give any specifics on how this had been accomplished.

In the same week, South Africa approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague to ask that Israel’s actions in Gaza be classified as genocide.

To some people, the timing of these two events is suspicious. And so the rumour was born that Iran, an enemy of Israel, had essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.

The major person who spread this claim appears to have been Frans Cronje, the former CEO of the Institute of Race Relations, in an interview with the Johannesburg radio station ChaiFM. A similar claim was made by advocate Paul Hoffman from Accountability Now in an interview with BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

The reason this claim is difficult to conclusively fact-check is because we don’t have access to the ANC’s balance sheets, so there’s no way of categorically refuting the idea that the party has just received a massive donation from Iran.

We asked ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu straight up: Has the ANC received money from Iran? She replied: “Unlike other parties, or even NGOs for that matter, the ANC does declare where its funding is derived.”

She’s referring to the regulations in the Political Party Funding Act – and we do know that if the ANC did receive funding from Iran, it would be a violation of this legislation, which prohibits South African political parties from accepting any funding from foreign governments except for training and policy development.

Bhengu said the idea that Iran was paying the ANC to approach the ICJ was “preposterous”.

It should be noted that the only reason we are led to believe that the ANC has just received some kind of cash injection is because of comments by the party’s treasurer-general, Gwen Ramokgopa, on the sidelines of the ANC’s January 8th birthday celebrations. She told journalists the party was in better shape financially, saying: “We are still not yet out of the woods but […] we have been able to stabilise our finances.”

We don’t know anything further about whether that is even true, or whether the ANC is putting on a brave face ahead of the elections. But Bhengu told us the party’s greater financial stability was thanks to membership fees, its debit order system and in-kind contributions.

In terms of the wider claim that South Africa is doing Iran’s bidding on the international stage, Department of Justice spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told Daily Maverick that this is offensive nonsense.

“It is very disappointing that the people who make spurious and conspiratorial claims are not required to support their claims with any evidence. Instead it’s government who has the burden to rebut these spurious claims,” he said.

There are two specific claims Hoffman which Phiri is adamant are factually incorrect.

One is that the South African government has had “quite a lot of interactions” with Iran since the October Hamas attacks on Israel. Phiri says there was one one-day meeting between International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor and her Iranian counterparts on 22 October 2023, which had been publicly disclosed at the time.

Phiri also says it is not accurate to say, as Hoffman has claimed, that the government has had repeated interactions with Hamas since the October attacks. Rather, it was the ANC that hosted a visiting Hamas delegation in December. And it was not the ANC that had taken Israel to the ICJ, but the Republic of South Africa.

There are many who will find this rebuttal unconvincing. But one fact we should keep in mind is that South Africa’s approach to the ICJ over Israel is in keeping with its wider stance on Gaza.

In other words, we don’t need a conspiracy theory to explain why South Africa went to the ICJ. Plenty of people might not like it, but it is consistent with the government’s position on Palestine stretching back many years. DM