A new bill intended to neutralize South Africa as a BRICS member was introduced into the U.S. Congress April 4. It goes further than the 2024 version under Biden, which was not enacted, but had the same intent. The U.S.-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act (bill) of 2025, [H.R.7256](https://jackson.house.gov/uploadedfiles/jacktx_035_xml.pdf ), was introduced by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Trump’s personal physician in his first term.
The bill’s “Findings of Congress” and “Sense of Congress” sections are a sometimes laughable mixture of truth and falsehood, non-sequitur, and the bait-and-switch trick (a pretense of concern for South Africa’s welfare).
The laughing stops, however, after pages and pages of charges, at the bottom line: “The South African Government’s foreign policy actions … directly favor the P.R.C., the Russian Federation, and Hamas, a known proxy of Iran [sic], and thereby undermine United States national security and foreign policy interests.” (H.R.7256, 2025, Sec. 3) And this has to stop. Russia, China, Iran? This is an attack on South Africa’s participation in the BRICS.
A small sample from the charge sheet follows (partly in paraphrase):
After the “unprovoked” Hamas attack on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor Oct. 7 blamed 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.”
On Oct 14, 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa accused Israel of “genocide.”
On Oct. 22, 2023, Pandor visited Tehran and met with President Raisi of Iran, which is actively funding Hamas.
