When it Comes to South Africa, The New York Times is Truly Uninformed

In a recent interview with The New York Times, President Cyril Ramaphosa attempted to position himself as a global statesman, mediating between Russia and Ukraine, maintaining lines to Beijing, Washington, and the United Nations, and pressing the case for "nonaligned" middle powers in an increasingly fractured world.

This kind of positioning is common from both Cyril Ramaphosa and the African National Congress (ANC) especially where their ties to the world's most unsavory regimes come into the picture.

It is also a claim that The New York Times reporting appears to accept.

The timing of this interview is worth noting. It is probable that Ramaphosa gave this interview after the Islamic Republic was engaged in the most severe crackdown on its own people in that regime's history, with estimates of more than 30 000 peaceful protesters killed.

Both Ramaphosa and the ANC have regularly justified their closeness to the Iranian regime by citing historical ties dating back to the ANC’s liberation struggle against apartheid. In much of the Western world, including its media, this explanation still carries some weight in softening the realities of their association with Iran.

Ramaphosa and the ANC ramped up this justification after the outbreak of the war in Iran. The justification offered by the ANC's leadership is one of historic loyalty. ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula captured it on X: after 1979, the Islamic Republic had "cut ties with racist South Africa", and therefore "we must not forget our friends".

It is a politically potent line. It is also, on close inspection, largely fiction.

As James Myburgh has documented in The Common Sense, the ANC's claim to liberation-era solidarity with Tehran collapses under scrutiny. After 1979, the Islamic Republic did not embrace the ANC, it purged and tortured the Soviet-backed Tudeh Party, with whom the ANC and South African Communist Party (SACP) were closely aligned at the time.

The SACP condemned these purges in the strongest terms. Meanwhile, through the 1980s, apartheid South Africa and the Islamic Republic maintained a clandestine and mutually beneficial commercial relationship: South African weapons for Iranian oil, with Pretoria supplying both sides of the Iran-Iraq War.

What brought the ANC and Iran together was a fundraising trip. Nelson Mandela visited Tehran in 1992, over the objections of his own officials, primarily to secure financial support following the collapse of the ANC's Soviet sponsors. That transaction, not shared values, was the foundation of the relationship Ramaphosa now defends as a matter of principle.

Ramaphosa's personal record on Iran is also worth examining. He chaired MTN when the telecommunications giant invested 49% into Irancell. Moreover, Ramaphosa’s presidency has seen a steady hardening of anti-American rhetoric. His opposition to Israel is also no secret; he has stated it openly in the Foreign Policy Magazine. 

In The New York Times interview, Ramaphosa says of US President Donald Trump: "I just thought that he is so uninformed, truly uninformed." It’s a remarkable line from a man who has spent his presidency defending an Iranian friendship based on a complete fabrication, one that was effective enough to fool The New York Times.