[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 24, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3393-S3395]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SA 6223. Mr. KENNEDY submitted an amendment intended to be proposed
by him to the bill S. 4784, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year
2027 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military
construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy,
to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for
other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
At the end of title XII, add the following:
Subtitle F--U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act
SEC. 1281. SHORT TITLE.
This subtitle may be cited as the ``U.S.-South Africa
Bilateral Relations Review Act''.
SEC. 1282. 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
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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 resist ance 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 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) 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 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 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 on-going 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. 1283. 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. 1284. 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. 1285. 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 1284.
(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. 1286. 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 abusees 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. 1287. TERMINATION OF ELIGIBILITY OF SOUTH AFRICA FOR
CERTAIN TRADE PREFERENCES PROGRAMS.
If the President determines and certifies under section
1285(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
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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. 1288. APPROPRIATE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES DEFINED.
In this subtitle, 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.
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