U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act

Bill: 119-s-2752
Sponsor: full_name: Sen. Kennedy, John [R-LA]
Introduced: 2025-09-10
Policy area: International Affairs
Latest action: action_date: 2025-09-10
text: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

Summaries:

tv_txt: II 119th CONGRESS 1st Session S. 2752 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES September 10, 2025 Mr. Kennedy introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations A BILL To require a full review of the bilateral relationship between the United States and South Africa.

1. Short title This Act may be cited as the U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) The actions of the African National Congress (ANC), which since 1994 has held a governing majority and controlled South Africa’s executive branch, are inconsistent with its publicly stated policy of nonalignment in international affairs. (2) In contrast to its stated stance of nonalignment, the Government of South Africa has a history of siding with malign actors, including Hamas, a United States-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and a proxy of the Iranian regime, and continues to pursue closer ties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation. (3) The Government of South Africa’s support of Hamas dates back to 1994, when the ANC first came into power, taking a hardline stance of consistently accusing Israel of practicing apartheid. (4) Following Hamas’ unprovoked and unprecedented horrendous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, where Hamas terrorists killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis, members of the Government of South Africa and leaders of the ANC have delivered a variety of antisemitic and anti-Israel-related statements and actions, including— (A) on October 7, 2023, South Africa’s Foreign Ministry released a statement expressing concern of escalating violence , urging Israel’s restraint in response, and implicitly blaming Israel for provoking the attack through continued illegal occupation of Palestine land, continued settlement expansion, desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Christian holy sites, and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people ; (B) on October 8, 2023, the ANC’s national spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, said of the devastating Hamas attack, the decision by Palestinians to respond to the brutality of the settler Israeli apartheid regime is unsurprising ; (C) on October 14, 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa accused Israel of genocide in statements during a pro-Palestinian rally; (D) on October 17, 2023, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor accepted a call with Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh; (E) on October 22, 2023, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor visited Tehran and met with President Raisi of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is actively funding Hamas; (F) on November 7, 2023, in a parliamentary address Foreign Minister Pandor called for the International Criminal Court to charge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with war crimes; (G) on November 17, 2023, South Africa, along with 4 other countries, submitted a joint request to the International Criminal Court for an investigation into war crimes being committed in the Palestinian territories; (H) on December 5, 2023, the ANC hosted three members of Hamas in Pretoria, including Khaled Qaddoumi, Hamas’s representative to Iran, and Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza; (I) on December 29, 2023, South Africa filed a politically motivated suit in the International Court of Justice wrongfully accusing Israel of committing genocide; (J) South African Foreign Minister Pandor, who— (i) was quoted in March 2024 as saying that South Africa will arrest Israeli-South Africans who are fighting in the Israeli Defense Forces upon their return home and could strip them of their South African citizenship; and (ii) has implicitly encouraged protests outside of the United States Embassy; (K) on October 7, 2024, the ANC commemorated only the Palestinian lives lost to Israel, while accusing Israel of genocide; (L) in October 2024, South Africa filed its Memorial to the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocidal actions to depopulate Gaza through mass death and displacement; (M) in November 2024, South Africa appointed Ebrahim Rasool as their Ambassador to the United States, who previously hosted senior Hamas officials to South Africa when he was the Premier of the Western Cape and, in 2020, was a speaker at an annual event hosted by the Iranian regime to celebrate Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel; and (N) the ANC’s ongoing attempt to rename the street that the United States Consulate in Johannesburg is located on as Leila Khaled Drive , including a quote from ANC first Deputy Secretary General Nomvula Mokonyane stating, We want the United States of America embassy to change their letterhead to Number 1 Leila Khaled Drive. . (5) The Government of South Africa has pursued increasingly close relations with the Government of the Russian Federation, which has been accused of perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine and indiscriminately undermines human rights. South Africa’s robust relationship with Russia spans the military and political space, including— (A) allowing a United States-sanctioned Russian cargo ship, the Lady R, to dock and transfer arms at a South African naval base in December 2022; (B) hosting offshore naval exercises, entitled Operation Mosi II , carried out jointly with the PRC and Russia, between February 17 and 27, 2023, corresponding with the 1-year anniversary of Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; (C) authorizing a United States-sanctioned Russian military cargo airplane to land at a South African Air Force Base; (D) reneging on its initial call for the Russian Federation to immediately withdraw its forces from Ukraine and actively seeking improved relations with Moscow since February 2022; (E) dispatching multiple high-level official delegations to Russia to further political, intelligence, and military cooperation; (F) United States sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg donating $826,000 to the ANC in 2022; and (G) the ANC publishing an article in their newspaper, ANC Today, in October 2024 promoting Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine. (6) Interactions between the Governments of South Africa, the People's Republic of China, and ANC interactions with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who are committing gross violations of human rights in the Xinjiang province and implement economically coercive tactics around the globe, undermine South Africa’s democratic constitutional system of governance, as exemplified in— (A) ongoing ANC and CCP interparty cooperation, especially with the fundamental incompatibility between the civil and democratic rights guaranteed in South Africa’s Constitution and the CCP’s routine suppression of free expression and individual rights; (B) the recruitment of former United States and NATO fighter pilots to train Chinese People’s Liberation Army pilots at the Test Flying Academy of South Africa, which the Department of Commerce added to the Entity List on June 12, 2023; (C) South Africa’s hosting of 6 PRC Government-backed and CCP-linked Confucius Institutes, a type of entity that a CCP official characterized as an important part of the CCP’s external propaganda structure , the most of any country in Africa; (D) South Africa’s participation in a political training school opened in Tanzania funded by the Chinese Communist Party where it trains political members of the ruling liberation movements in six South African countries. The school instills CCP ideology into the next-generation of African leaders and attempts to export the CCP’s system of party-run authoritarian governance to the African continent; (E) cooperation with the PRC under the PRC’s global Belt and Road Initiative which, while trade and infrastructure-focused, is designed to expand PRC global economic, political, and security sector-related influence; (F) the widespread presence in South Africa’s media and technology sectors of PRC state linked firms that the United States has restricted due to threats to national security, including Huawei Technologies, ZTE and Hikvision, which place South African sovereignty at risk and facilitate the CCP’s export of its model of digitally aided authoritarian governance underpinned by cyber controls, social monitoring, propaganda, and surveillance; and (G) the Government of South Africa’s clear appeasement to the CCP in demanding that Taiwan relocate its representative office out of Pretoria and downgrade its status to that of a trade office. (7) The ANC-led Government of South Africa has a history of substantially mismanaging a range of state resources and has often proven incapable of effectively delivering public services, threatening the South African people and the South African economy, as illustrated by— (A) President Cyril Ramaphosa’s February 9, 2023, declaration of a national state of disaster over the worsening, multi-year power crisis caused by the ANC’s chronic mismanagement of the state-owned power company Eskom, resulting from endemic, high-level corruption; (B) the persistence of South African state-owned railway company Transnet’s insufficient capacity, which has disrupted rail operations and hindered mining companies’ export of iron ore, coal, and other commodities, in part due to malfeasance and corruption by former Transnet officials; (C) an ongoing outbreak of cholera, the worst in 15 years, which is due in part to the Government of South Africa’s disease prevention failures, as President Ramaphosa admitted on June 9, 2023, including a failure to provide clean water to households; and (D) rampant state capture, that emerged and grew during the administration of former President Jacob Zuma and has damaged South Africa’s international standing and profoundly undermined the rule of law, continues to negatively impact the economic development prospects and living standards of the South African people while deeply damaging public trust in state governance. (8) In November 2024, South Africa appointed Ebrahim Rasool as Ambassador to the United States. Rasool had previously made public comments describing President Trump as extreme and in March 2025, Mr. Rasool characterized President Trump as a white supremacist . Secretary of State Marco Rubio subsequently declared Mr. Rasool as persona non grata in the United States. 3. Sense of Congress It is the sense of Congress that— (1) it is in the national security interest of the United States to deter strategic political and security cooperation and information sharing with the PRC and the Russian Federation, particularly any form of cooperation that may aid or abet Russia’s illegal war of aggression in Ukraine or its international standing or influence; and (2) the ANC’s foreign policy actions have long ceased to reflect its stated stance of nonalignment, and now directly favor the PRC, the Russian Federation, and Hamas, a known proxy of Iran, and thereby undermine United States national security and foreign policy interests. 4. Full review of the bilateral relationship The President, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the United States Ambassador to South Africa, and the heads of other departments and agencies that play a substantial role in United States relations with South Africa, shall conduct a comprehensive review of the bilateral relationship between the United States and South Africa. 5. Report and certification Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report that includes the following: (1) The findings of the review required by section 4. (2) A certification, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, explicitly stating whether South Africa has engaged in activities that undermine the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States, together with an unclassified report, including a classified annex as necessary, providing a justification for the determination. The President shall publish the certification in unclassified form. 6. Report on sanctionable persons (a) In general Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a classified report on senior South African government officials and ANC leaders. (b) Elements The report required under subsection (a) shall include the following elements: (1) A list of senior South African government officials and ANC leaders the President determines have engaged in corruption or human rights abuses that would be sufficient, based on credible evidence, to meet the criteria for the imposition of sanctions pursuant to the authorities provided by the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act ( 22 U.S.C. 10101 et seq. ). (2) With respect to each person included on such list— (A) a detailed explanation describing the conduct forming the basis of the person’s inclusion on the list; and (B) (i) the expected timeline for sanctions described in paragraph (1) to be imposed with respect to such person; or (ii) if the President does not intend to impose sanctions with respect to such person, a detailed justification describing the rationale and legal authorities underlying such negative determination. 7. Termination of eligibility of South Africa for certain trade preferences programs If the President determines and certifies under section 5(2) that South Africa has engaged in activities that undermine the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States, the President shall terminate the eligibility of South Africa for designation as an eligible sub-Saharan African country under section 104 of the African Growth and Opportunity Act ( 19 U.S.C. 3703 ) or a beneficiary sub-Saharan African country under section 506A of the Trade Act of 1974 ( 19 U.S.C. 2466a ). 8. Appropriate congressional committees defined In this Act, the term appropriate congressional committees means— (1) the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate; and (2) the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives.