[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 2633 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
119th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 2633
To require a full review of the bilateral relationship between the
United States and South Africa and identify South African government
officials and ANC leaders eligible for the imposition of sanctions, and
for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
April 3, 2025
Mr. Jackson of Texas (for himself and Mr. James) introduced the
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs,
and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be
subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration
of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee
concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To require a full review of the bilateral relationship between the
United States and South Africa and identify South African government
officials and ANC leaders eligible for the imposition of sanctions, and
for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``U.S.-South Africa Bilateral
Relations Review Act of 2025''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The actions of factions within the African National
Congress (ANC), the political party that since 1994 has held a
governing majority and controlled South Africa's executive
branch, are inconsistent with the South African Government's
publicly stated policy of nonalignment in international
affairs.
(2) The South African Government 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 South African Government'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 the unprovoked and unprecedented horrendous
attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, where Hamas
terrorists killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis, members
of the South African Government 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 issue an immediate
arrest warrant charging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu with violations of international criminal
law;
(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
alleged war crimes being committed in the Palestinian
territories;
(H) on December 5, 2023, the ANC hosted 3 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) in March 2024, South African Foreign Minister
Pandor was quoted saying 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. Minister
Pandor also 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 saying ``we want the United States of America
embassy to change their letterhead to Number 1 Leila
Khaled Drive''.
(5) The South African Government and the ANC have
maintained close relations with 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) South African Government interactions with the PRC
Government 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 inter-party 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) allowing the private Test Flying Academy of
South Africa, which the Department of Commerce added to
the Entity List on June 12, 2023, to recruit former
United States and NATO fighter pilots to train Chinese
People's Liberation Army pilots;
(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 African Government support for, and ANC
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 6 Southern 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 South African government'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 South African Government 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) outbreaks of cholera in 2023 and 2024, the
worst in 15 years, which were due in part to the South
African Government'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, Rasool characterized President Trump as ``a
white supremacist''. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
subsequently declared Rasool as persona non grata in the United
States.
SEC. 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 war of aggression on Ukraine or its
international standing or influence; and
(2) the South African Government'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.
SEC. 4. PRESIDENTIAL CERTIFICATION OF DETERMINATION WITH RESPECT TO
SOUTH AFRICA.
(a) In General.--Not later than 30 days after the date of enactment
of this Act, the President, in consultation with the Secretary of State
and the Secretary of Defense, shall certify to the appropriate
congressional committees and release publicly an unclassified
determination explicitly stating whether South Africa has engaged in
activities that undermine United States national security or foreign
policy interests.
(b) Accompanying Report.--The certification required by subsection
(a) shall be accompanied by an unclassified report submitted to the
appropriate congressional committees, with a classified annex if
necessary, providing the justification for the determination.
SEC. 5. FULL REVIEW OF THE BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP.
(a) Bilateral Relationship Review.--The President, in consultation
with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the United
States Trade Representative, and the heads of other Federal 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.
(b) Report on Findings.--Not later than 120 days after the date of
enactment of this Act, the President shall submit to the appropriate
congressional committees a report that includes the findings of the
review required by subsection (a).
SEC. 6. REPORT ON SANCTIONABLE PERSONS.
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 Treasury, shall submit to the appropriate congressional
committees a classified report that includes--
(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.); and
(2) with respect to each person identified pursuant to
paragraph (1)--
(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.
SEC. 7. DEFINITIONS.
(a) ANC.--The term ``ANC'' means the African National Congress.
(b) Appropriate Congressional Committees.--The term ``appropriate
congressional committees'' means--
(1) the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of
Representatives; and
(2) the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate.
(c) CCP.--The term ``CCP'' means the Chinese Communist Party.
(d) PRC.--The term ``PRC'' means the People's Republic of China.
<all>