This article gives a number of reasons for South Africa’s current hostility to Israel. I hope no one will say “Oh, he’s just following Breitbart.” That source has many articles I do not read, and some articles I like and some I don’t. But I think this article deserves to be evaluated by its content.

Prior to the three reasons in the quote below, the article first mentions two: (1)historic ties between the African National Congress and the PLO (2) Israel’s secret military alliance with white South Africa in the 1970s and 80s.

The article gives several more reasons in the following excerpt:

That alone does not explain the hostility. An additional factor is the presence of sizable and vocal Muslim communities in every major South African city. Moreover, the South African Muslim community is dominated by radical elements. Though a small minority of the overall South African population, Muslims are well represented in the professions, in the media, and in politics. Jews, too, are highly visible in these fields, but there are fewer of them, and as “whites,” their voices are seen as less legitimate.

Another factor is the dysfunction of the South African government, which is so corrupt and incompetent that the country can barely keep the lights on. Since the early 2000s, the ANC has found the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a useful way to distract the population by reigniting its old “struggle” politics, with Israel cast (falsely) as the old regime. (The leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, was led to prominence by a Jew named Tony Leon, for whom I worked. The fact that he is married to an Israeli was often the occasion for vicious attacks by anti-Israel, antisemitic voices within the ANC.)  Though South Africa’s own human rights record is appalling, even after apartheid, it can also deflect international critics by leading the fight against Israel.

There is also the issue of corruption. The ANC has cozy relationships, many of them lubricated by corruption, with some of the world’s most repressive regimes. Critics have speculated that the South African government has taken a staunchly anti-Israel view that risks disrupting its trade relations with Israel and the West because it is being paid by anti-Israel regimes or organizations. Given the recent history of “state capture,” where corrupt outsiders basically bought government departments, that is plausible.