119-s2752

[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.
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