Calls mount on US to review its policy towards South Africa’s ‘corrupt’ ANC elites

Calls have stepped up asking US President Joe Biden and the Congress to stop helping South Africa’s corrupt ANC leaders, who have betrayed Mandela’s legacy of human rights and social justice.

Since the end of Apartheid, save a short bracket under the rule of Mandela, the ANC has led South Africa to more inequality and rampant corruption coupled with failing public services.

In a country where power blackouts have become a norm with citizens sustaining long dark hours, the South African corrupt leaders led their country’s economy to verge on recession with 0.1% growth only in the fourth quarter last year.

South Africa continues under the ANC leadership to top criminality and corruption ranking and to regress in industry and welfare indexes.

The ANC has sought diplomatic distraction by engaging with rogue states like Iran or armed groups such as Hamas or even the Sudanese armed militias.

“It’s time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable,” wrote the Hill.

The US publication urged sanctions on South African officials involved in corruption cases documented in a 5000-page report by its chief justice.

It also recalled successful US prosecutions of multinational corporations for bribing South African officials.

Last year, Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) warned that South Africa, by aiding Russia’s military, was “in danger of losing the African Growth and Opportunity Act benefits.”

“The ANC is no longer the moral beacon it was under Mandela, South Africa’s president from 1994 to 1999,” said the Hill.

Under the ANC, corruption has become endemic. The chief justice had issued in 2022 a report on Ramaphosa’s predecessor Jacob Zuma accusing him of “the looting of billions of dollars from South Africa’s state coffers” and “how almost every arm of the state was suffocated and left bankrupt by leaders” of the ANC.