JUN KAJEE: ANC is an open book for US sanctions

With the dust from US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz still far from settled, the US Congress has introduced the US-SA Bilateral Relations Review Act, a precursor to direct sanctions against the ANC.

Spearheaded by congressman Ronny Jackson and co-sponsored by congressman John James, this legislation aims to address concerns over SA’s alignment with “adversarial nations”, including China, Russia and Iran. The ANC is now set to join a motley group of sanctions targets, including Venezuela’s autocratic Maduro regime and Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen’s government, accused of rigging elections. 

The risk of imminent sanctions against the ANC soared after then SA ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool’s tone-deaf remarks on the Trump administration and his subsequent expulsion from Washington. This diplomatic gaffe is specifically mentioned as one of the primary motivations for the sanctions efforts outlined in Jackson’s bill. Other grievances include:

• Military and financial ties with Russia: The ANC has supported joint naval exercises with Russia and accepted donations from Russian oligarchs, raising alarms about its growing co-operation with Moscow.
• Deepening engagement with China: Participation in China’s Belt & Road Initiative and the department of international relations & co-operation’s increasing pressure on Taiwan to relocate its unofficial embassy from Pretoria to Johannesburg, emblematic of increasing pressure from China.
• Support for Hamas: Statements from ANC officials following Hamas attacks on Israel have been interpreted as aligning with a US-designated terrorist organisation.
• Increased corruption. Domestically, the bill highlights the mismanagement of SA’s state resources and failures in public service delivery under ANC leadership as additional justifications for punitive measures.

If enacted, the legislation would mandate a comprehensive review of bilateral relations within 120 days, requiring Trump to submit a detailed report to Congress. It would identify SA officials and ANC leaders eligible for sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which targets individuals involved in corruption or gross human rights violations.

Sanctions could include asset freezes, visa revocations, entry bans and restrictions on financial transactions with US entities. These sanctions would target individuals rather than the state, ensuring a focused approach to addressing perceived misconduct.  

Information on the ANC has likely been gathered by the US through a combination of diplomatic intelligence, opposition group lobbying and signals intelligence. Afrikaner interest groups AfriForum and Solidarity held high-profile meetings with Trump administration officials in February, explicitly calling for US pressure on ANC leaders. Their delegation presented a memorandum demanding punitive measures.

This covered land expropriation policies, which were framed as discriminatory against Afrikaners, citing the Expropriation Act, as well as hate speech and farm murders, with the ANC accused of failing to address violence against minority communities. Racial legislation was also highlighted, specifically the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, which they claim marginalises Afrikaans education.

Subsequent announcements by the White House freezing aid to SA and offering refugee status to Afrikaners directly echoed these grievances. Solidarity’s Jaco Kleynhans later confirmed that its lobbying had shaped Trump’s focus on SA, stating: “Trump’s statements and focus on SA are partly due to our many years of engagement but also due to the SA government’s total neglect of relations with the US”. 

While the DA’s Washington visit occurred separately, its timing last month and focus on “saving [the African Growth & Opportunity Act]” intersected with broader opposition efforts to isolate the ANC. The DA framed its engagement as protecting trade ties, but the collective pressure from SA opposition groups likely reinforced the perception of ANC governance as a liability for US interests.

DA federal council chair Helen Zille is on record as saying that “during the negotiations to set up the [government of national unity], the ANC was obsessed with retaining the international relations portfolio more so than any other”, adding that “there is far more that goes on behind the veil of that portfolio than is publicly acknowledged”. 

Public acknowledgments aside, an escalation of sanctions action against the ANC would make some private information fair game. While the ANC has warned members against “inflammatory” social media use, its digital strategy inherently embeds its operations within platforms bound by US surveillance laws, making its data a de facto open book for intelligence purposes.

Efforts to scrub sensitive communications would be futile, as tech companies routinely retain user data — including “deleted” content — for extended periods often spanning months or years. ANC officials’ reliance on platforms such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Google (YouTube, Gmail) and Apple (iMessage, iCloud) for political communication and operations creates a vast digital footprint that US agencies can legally access and harvest for information.

While Google, Meta and Apple themselves are not intelligence agencies, their platforms and data repositories are accessible to the US government through:

• Legally compelled data requests: US authorities can subpoena user data (emails, messages, geolocation) tied to ANC officials or affiliated entities under laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. For example, Meta and Google have complied with 80%-90% of US government data requests since 2014, sharing details of over 3.1-million accounts. 
• Bulk metadata collection: Even without direct content, patterns in metadata (communication networks, location histories) could help map ANC alliances or identify foreign contacts. US analysts might use tools to aggregate timestamps, sender/receiver data, and device IDs from ANC officials’ emails (Gmail) or messaging apps (WhatsApp). Patterns such as frequent late-night calls to Russian or Chinese diplomats could flag potential co-ordination, similar to how Nato mapped Libyan loyalist networks pre-intervention.
• Public posts and ads: ANC officials’ social media activity is openly accessible and probably monitored by US intelligence. The Pentagon’s Social Media in Strategic Communication initiative monitors online content for “emerging themes” and “influence operations”, using algorithms to detect adversarial messaging. Applied to ANC officials, this could flag posts aligning with US-designated entities such as Hamas, or criticising US policies.

The ANC should heed the grim precedents set by previous US-targeted regimes: Saddam Hussein’s capture in a hole near Tikrit and subsequent execution after a politicised trial, and Muammar Gaddafi’s Nato-backed overthrow, capture by rebels and alleged covert assassination by foreign agents. Sanctions often serve as a precursor to destabilisation, as seen in Libya’s UN-backed intervention.

While US sanctions against the ANC focus on individuals, history shows how punitive measures can rapidly escalate into regime collapse — a fate unlikely but not unthinkable if geopolitical tensions deepen.  The US foreign policy playbook often progresses from diplomacy to sanctions and, as a last resort, military action — a pattern now unfolding with ANC sanctions in focus after failed diplomatic engagement.

The ANC’s geopolitical calculus must prioritise constructive rapprochement with the US, as neither Russia — a pariah state haemorrhaging resources in Ukraine under crushing sanctions of their own — nor China, which faces domestic economic stagnation from the fallout of Trump’s trade war, can offer reliable support.   

History underscores the US’s unique leverage: its 1980s sanctions programme, which Nelson Mandela explicitly credited for isolating the apartheid regime, demonstrated how US pressure could dismantle entrenched systems of oppression that many thought would endure for generations to come.

Just as sanctions dismantled apartheid, these very same measures could spell the end of the ANC. 

• Kajee is a lecturer and adjunct faculty member at Southern Utah University, focusing on internationalisation and intercultural communication.