[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2752 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
<DOC>
119th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 2752
To require a full review of the bilateral relationship between the
United States and South Africa.
_______________________________________________________________________
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.
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''.
SEC. 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.
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 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.
SEC. 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.
SEC. 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.
SEC. 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.
SEC. 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).
SEC. 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.
<all>