 [RedState] With the end of Apartheid in South Africa came the dream of new beginnings, a "Rainbow Nation" that would make racial division a thing of the past. In the famous phrasing of President Nelson Mandela’s 1994 Inaugural Address: "Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld — a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world." The 2009 film "Invictus" helped many international audiences appreciate for the first time how South Africans of all backgrounds came together around the new flag and the new system out of common love of country during the 1995 Rugby Cup.
Unfortunately, the current leadership of the nation has abandoned Mandela’s dream in favor of democratic backsliding, antagonistic rhetoric and policies against minority groups, a troubling alignment with the world’s most vicious human rights abusers, and increasing levels of antisemitic scapegoating. Nowhere does this toxic stew of policies come together more noxiously than with South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump Administration has rightly targeted the ICC for dangerously perverting its intended role as it targets democracies executing self-defense rather than genuine aggressors and perpetrators of atrocities. It is also time to trace the problem back to its source and demand change from the originator of the ugly ICC case against Israel — South Africa.
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has sought to distract from his domestic abuses by accusing Israel of "Apartheid." But Apartheid is an Afrikaans term unique to South Africa that describes an ugly system similar to segregation, whereby that country treated people differently based on their race, even prohibiting romantic relationships between people of different races. In Israel, in contrast, citizens of all races and religions have had full civil, social, and political rights since the country’s independence.
Actually, it is modern South Africa, not Israel, that is aggressively reducing the rights of minority citizens. South Africa’s Expropriation Act, signed into law by Ramaphosa on January 23, 2025, allows the South African parliament, as well as all local, provincial, and national authorities, to seize land from private citizens without any compensation if that is considered "just and reasonable." Ramaphose claims to be acting against "white privilege" and backs up these policies with inciteful rhetoric like, "Don't fear white people, their time has passed, and they no longer have power." 
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