VIEWPOINT: IDO LEKOTA
The dust over Gaza has not settled, yet Africa is already staking its claim in the aftermath. Not in the crude binary of Israel versus Palestine, but in the deeper, more consequential choice: what kind of power does Africa want to be in a world where law, force, and diplomacy are increasingly out of sync?
It began in December 2023, when South Africa hauled Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of genocide. By 2024, the ICJ had issued three binding orders: prevent acts of genocide, allow unhindered humanitarian aid, and halt the Rafah offensive while keeping the crossing open. Each order was defied.
In its latest move, South Africa filed a dossier alleging Israel’s continued contempt, citing over 73,000 Palestinian deaths since 2023 – with the chilling statistic that at least one child has been killed every single day since US President Donald Trump’s faltering peace plan was announced.
South Africa’s stance sits uneasily beside Morocco, Uganda, and Burundi, who have quietly signed up for Washington’s International Stabilisation Force to underwrite that same plan. The contradiction is stark: one African state pursues justice in The Hague, while others prepare to secure the battlefield for a deal the alleged perpetrator has not even accepted. This is not just rhetoric – it cuts to the bone of African unity, credibility, and the meaning of solidarity.
On the ground, Gaza itself makes South Africa’s case visceral. Despite a US-brokered ceasefire in October 2025, more than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed and 4,000 injured since. Four in five families face catastrophic hunger. Nearly 90% of civilian infrastructure lies in ruins. In this rubble, SA’s claim that Palestinians face a “real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice” is not abstract law. It is the blunt naming of a reality: a population whose basic conditions of life are being erased faster than politics can restore them.
South Africa’s filing is surgical. It doesn’t reargue genocide; it zeroes in on Israel’s defiance of the ICJ’s provisional measures. Updated casualty figures, evidence of bombardment, aid restrictions, and even a threefold rise in miscarriages among Palestinian women in 2026 are marshalled to make one point: the ICJ’s orders risk becoming paper shields against live fire. For SA, this is consistent with a foreign policy that treats international law as a weapon of the weak against the strong – admired by some, irritating to others.
Meanwhile, Washington pushes a different script. Trump’s Board of Peace touts a 15-point roadmap: Hamas disarms in phases, Israel withdraws, and a 20,000-strong force secures Gaza. But the plan is stalled. Hamas demands Israel halt attacks first; Netanyahu refuses any pullback until Hamas is “completely disarmed.” US envoy and Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner’s August talks collapsed. Yet the US presses ahead, funding $206 million for the force’s infrastructure. The logic is clear: not legal accountability, but security architecture – build a force strong enough to impose a deal, even if the conflict itself remains unresolved.
Into this breach step Morocco, Uganda, and Burundi. Morocco pledges 500 personnel, Uganda 1,200, Burundi signals readiness. Officially, these deployments are framed as peacekeeping. Pragmatically, they offer training, political capital, and a seat at the table. But optics matter: African soldiers in a US-led force alongside Israel, while South Africa litigates genocide, creates a narrative contradiction ripe for exploitation. Africa, as a bloc, now argues both that ICJ orders are being defied and that it is stabilising the very battlefield those orders sought to restrain.
This is where history bites. Africa’s influence in multilateral forums once rested on unity – against apartheid, for self-determination, for decolonisation. That unity was never perfect, but it was powerful enough to shape norms. Today, Gaza risks fracturing that moral capital. If Africa is seen as split between legal accountability and Western-led security, its leverage in future crises will shrink. External actors will learn to play Africa against itself: some states courted as “security partners,” others dismissed as “norm entrepreneurs.”
The deeper question is what order Africa wants to back. South Africa wagers on law: if ICJ orders can be defied without consequence, international law is hollow. The US and its African allies wager on force: an imperfect deal backed by boots on the ground is better than no deal at all. Both logics matter – law without enforcement is toothless, force without legitimacy is brittle. But pursued in parallel, they fracture Africa’s voice.
The danger is not confined to Gaza. It will resurface in the next crisis where the AU must choose between law, force, or both. If troop contributors seek AU mandates, Africa could craft a coherent framework linking security operations to legal objectives. If they remain bilateral, the precedent is set: African states opting into external architectures with minimal continental oversight, even when those clash with African positions in court.
National interests will continue to drive choices – Morocco’s normalization with Israel, Uganda’s security ties, Burundi’s search for support. These are rational. But they expose the gap between national interest and continental strategy. Civil society, parliaments, and courts will increasingly demand answers: why are African soldiers deployed into a theatre where another African state argues genocide prevention is being ignored? Those answers will shape how citizens see their place in the world – and whether the AU is more than a talking shop.
