Standing With Maduro, Tripping Over Reality

This weekend, the African National Congress (ANC) gathered in Rustenburg to mark its 8 January birthday amid visible signs of decline. The stadium was half empty. Potholes leading to the venue were interrupted by road. An event meant to project authority instead exposed fragility. Even the staged displays of revolutionary discipline rang hollow, with a few ANC supporters in military-style fatigues attempting a leopard crawl across the field, appearing less like the vanguard of a glorious revolution and more like bad cosplay for the disinterested crowd.

This was not a movement at the height of its confidence. It was a governing party that had lost its national majority, struggling to summon symbols of strength in a country where basic services continue to fail and public trust has steadily ebbed away.

Yet from that same stage, the ANC chose to speak in the language of universal human rights and global moral authority. Its January 8 statement invoked the United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, warning that “the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world”, and said this foundation was “under threat”.

It then declared, “It is also for this reason that we stand in solidarity with the peoples of Western Sahara, Cuba, and Venezuela in their respective struggles to secure self-determination and sovereign integrity.”

That Venezuela line landed in a specific moment. Days earlier, the United States (US) had removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a military operation and taken him to New York to face criminal proceedings.

Pretoria reacted with outrage. The Department of International Relations and Cooperation condemned the operation as “a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations”. The ANC escalated the language further, calling it “the kidnapping of… Maduro” and warning it “threatens global peace and stability”.

At the same time that President Cyril Ramaphosa was addressing half a stadium, the South African Communist Party (SACP) led a protest outside the US Embassy in Pretoria calling for Maduro’s release, with placards reading “Hands Off Venezuela”, “Free President Maduro Now”, and “End American Imperialism”, while SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila told supporters the US wanted to take Venezuela’s oil “directly under their control”. A video posted on X from the protest captured how thin the understanding could be among some participants, including one protester who believed Maduro was being held “at the US Embassy in Pretoria”.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about the wisdom and legality of unilateral American action. But it is ridiculous for the ANC to pose as a defender of human dignity while throwing its political weight behind a regime whose record of violence and repression is described in plain, unromantic language by major international bodies.

That record is not difficult to summarise.

Under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela became a country where political power was maintained through force, fear, and the systematic removal of basic civil liberties. The scale of abuse accelerated sharply after a presidential election in July 2024, when protests against the disputed result were met with lethal force by the government as well as militias linked to the ruling party.

According to the US Department of State’s 2024 human rights report, Venezuela experienced “credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, disappearances, torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary arrest or detention” of opponents of the regime. The report states plainly that the human rights situation “significantly worsened” after the July election.

The UN has described the post-election bloodshed in blunt terms. The UN said that its fact-finding mission to monitor the Venezuelan elections had “confirmed 25 fatalities” after the 28 July vote and added that most victims were “young people under 30 years old… There are two children among them.” It noted that 24 people “died from gunshot wounds” and “the other was beaten to death”.

The violence did not stop once demonstrations were suppressed. It shifted into mass arrests and disappearances.

Between late July and mid-September 2024, Venezuelan civil society organisations recorded more than 1 800 people detained in connection with post-election protests. Many were taken without warrants. Families were often not told where detainees were being held or whether they were alive.

Inside detention facilities, the use of torture by the Maduro regime was widespread.

The State Department report records “regular torture and abuse of detainees” by government-aligned security forces. Methods included beatings, electric shocks, prolonged solitary confinement, and denial of medical care. Sexual violence was also documented. Women held in prisons were reported to have been “coerced into sexual acts in exchange for food or water”.

The same report states that no credible steps were taken to identify or punish officials responsible for human rights abuses. In other words, the system did not malfunction. It operated as designed.

Journalists and independent media were also treated as enemies of the state.

In the months leading up to the July election, dozens of journalists were harassed, threatened, or detained. After the vote, repression intensified. Media outlets were closed. Equipment was confiscated. Journalists were arrested on charges such as terrorism and incitement. Venezuela was formally categorised by regional press bodies as a country “without freedom of expression”.

The judiciary offered no protection. Courts were used to legitimise detention rather than to challenge it. Prolonged pre-trial detention became normal. In addition, some prisoners remained behind bars even after completing their sentences.

Alongside political repression, economic collapse deepened the suffering of ordinary Venezuelans.

Under Maduro, Venezuela’s oil industry, once the foundation of national prosperity, deteriorated through corruption and mismanagement. Refineries fell into disrepair. Production collapsed. Accidents became common. Wages lost value. The national minimum wage fell below the poverty line, leaving millions unable to afford basic food, medicine, or transport.

Inflation eroded purchasing power year after year. Poverty spread. More than seven million Venezuelans fled the country over the past decade, one of the largest peacetime migration crises in the world.

By early 2026, repression remained entrenched. Venezuelan human rights group Foro Penal reported more than 800 political prisoners in the country, including dozens of foreign nationals.

This is the regime the ANC chose to stand with.

Not with Venezuelans shot in the streets after a disputed election. Not with families searching for missing relatives. Not with journalists imprisoned for reporting facts. Not with women abused in detention. Not with workers paid wages that no longer buy food.

Instead, the ANC chose solidarity with the state that inflicted those harms and reserved its strongest moral language for condemning the US.

That choice is not about anti-imperialism. It is about alignment.

The Venezuela line in the January 8 statement is not incidental. It is a weathervane of where the ANC now locates its sympathies in the world. And when that alignment is set against the plain record of killings, disappearances, torture, and impunity, the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.

The ANC condemns Washington for acting against Maduro. But Maduro’s real victims were Venezuelans. And any movement that claims to speak the language of human dignity, while standing with the jailer instead of the jailed, has lost more than an election. It has lost the moral authority it still insists on invoking.