South Africa has just made a decision that perfectly exposes the gap between its rhetoric on Israel and its actual treatment of Palestinians in need of protection.
As our International Affairs Correspondent Mathilda Heller reported in The Jerusalem Post, “South Africa has withdrawn its 90-day visa exemption for Palestinian passport holders on account of the visas being used to ‘relocate Palestinians from Gaza,’ the country's Department of Home Affairs announced on Saturday.”
The department claimed there was “deliberate and ongoing abuse of the 90-day visa exemption for Palestinian ordinary passport holders by Israeli actors linked to ‘voluntary emigration’ efforts for residents of the Gaza Strip,” and pointed to charter flights that brought 153 Gazans to South Africa as a supposed example of this abuse.
In other words, the same government that accuses Israel of “genocide” and “forcible displacement” at the International Court of Justice is now shutting its own doors for fear that too many Palestinians may actually succeed in leaving a war zone and landing on its territory.
According to Heller’s report, South Africa’s Border Management Authority initially refused entry to the 153 Gazans because they could not indicate “the duration of their stay or the address of their accommodation.”
Civil society organizations stepped in, and 130 of them were ultimately processed for entry on 90-day visas, while 23 continued to other destinations. Now Pretoria’s answer is not to improve its refugee procedures or crack down on dubious brokers, but to cancel visa-free entry for all Palestinian passport holders.
South Africa accused Israel of genocide, now denies Palestinians
When President Cyril Ramaphosa suggested that travellers on the latest charter flight may have been “flushed out of Gaza,” and his home affairs minister declared that South Africa “will not be complicit in any scheme to exploit or displace Palestinians,” the language sounded uncannily like the accusations South Africa levels at Israel.
The difference is that this time, it is Pretoria using the fear of “displacement” as a reason to keep Palestinians out.
This would be troubling enough on its own. It is devastating when placed alongside South Africa’s broader record of double standards.
This is the same South Africa that has taken Israel to the ICJ under the Genocide Convention, arguing that it has a special obligation to prevent genocide and casting itself as the moral custodian of “never again” for the Palestinians. Yet when genocide suspects were real, not imagined, Pretoria behaved very differently.
In 2015, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, landed in South Africa. The government refused to arrest him.
South Africa’s own Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the failure was unlawful, and the ICC later found Pretoria had violated its obligations under the Rome Statute. Genocide, it turns out, is a legal bludgeon when Israel is in the dock, but an awkward technicality when the suspect is a visiting African strongman.
Or consider Iran. In May 2024, South Africa expressed “deepest sympathy and condolences” to the government and people of Iran after the deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a helicopter crash.
Raisi was widely known as the “butcher of Tehran” for his role in mass executions and repression. Yet Pretoria’s tone was warm and respectful, the language of friendship. When Israel strikes Iranian targets, South Africa issues stern condemnations of Israeli aggression.
When the architect of Iran’s brutality dies, it sends condolences. When Palestinians from Gaza try to reach South Africa, it cancels their visas.
Then there is Hamas. Over the years, South Africa has repeatedly welcomed Hamas leaders. In 2015, a Hamas politburo delegation led by Khaled Mashaal was hosted by the African National Congress and met its top leadership.
In 2007, a South African minister publicly invited Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to visit the country. More recently, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor held a phone call with Haniyeh after October 7, a move that caused embarrassment even inside Pretoria.
So the government that rolls out the red carpet for Hamas’s political leadership and positions itself as its legal advocate in The Hague, now makes it harder for ordinary Palestinians to come in on a tourist visa.
Finally, there is South Africa’s treatment of migrants closer to home. Human Rights Watch and others have documented years of xenophobic harassment and sometimes lethal violence against African and Asian foreign nationals, including refugees and asylum seekers.
Vigilante movements like Operation Dudula have campaigned to “force out” migrants, with intimidation and street actions.
Against this backdrop, the image from Heller’s story of 153 Palestinians stranded at OR Tambo, their status disputed and their presence treated as a problem to be solved rather than people to be protected, fits an established pattern. Foreigners are welcome in South African political speeches. They are less welcome in South African neighbourhoods.
None of this absolves Israel of responsibility for what happens in Gaza. Israel’s conduct of the war, its protection of civilians and its long-term vision for Gaza all deserve scrutiny and criticism, including from friends. But moral scrutiny cuts both ways.
A government that failed to arrest Omar al-Bashir, that sends condolences to Tehran while condemning Israel, that courts Hamas leaders while closing its skies to Palestinian families, and that struggles to prevent xenophobic violence at home, is in no position to lecture Israel on human rights from a pedestal.
If Pretoria truly cared about Palestinian lives rather than Palestinian symbolism, it would keep the visa exemption in place, protect vulnerable arrivals from exploitation and fix the abuses surrounding charter flights without punishing everyone.
It would apply its “never again” rhetoric consistently, whether the suspect sits in Jerusalem, Khartoum or Tehran. And it would show, on its own soil, that migrants and refugees are not just tools in someone else’s legal war, but human beings worthy of rights, dignity and a safe place to land.