World
Anger rises over South Africa making millions in US benefits while cozying up to Iran, Russia and Hamas
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa is under fire for spending millions of dollars talking to terror group Hamas and sending delegations for cozy negotiations with U.S. adversaries Russia and Iran. Some critics say the money would be better spent tackling the “chaos” back home.
South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world, rampant crime and widespread corruption, which has led to large parts of Johannesburg having no water for 10 out of the past 11 days, and, nationally, power blackouts between four and 11 hours a day.
The U.S. helps South Africa gain billions of dollars a year in trade benefits through the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA. Orde Kittrie, law professor at Arizona State University and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital it’s time for South Africa to be thrown out of the program.
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Russia’s President Vladimir Putin speaks with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the first plenary session as part of the 2019 Russia-Africa Summit at the Sirius Park of Science and Art in Sochi, Russia, Oct. 24, 2019. (Sergei Chirikov/Pool via REUTERS)
“The ANC-led South African government has, in its relations with both Russia and Hamas, violated the requirement that AGOA beneficiaries not undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy and, with regard to Hamas, violated the requirement that AGOA beneficiaries not “provide support for acts of international terrorism,” said Kittrie, who also served as a State Department attorney and policy officiaL
“The AGOA law’s requirements really leave the Biden administration no choice but to terminate South Africa’s AGOA benefits unless such activities cease.”
South Africa continually makes controversial diplomatic moves, including allowing Russian ships to play war games just off the coast and permitting a Russian arms ship, the Lady R, to dock at a South African military base. This has attracted the attention of Sen. Tim Scott, the ranking Republican member of the Senate subcommittee on Africa and a member of the Senate subcommittee on banking.
“South Africa has harbored sanctioned Russian ships, expanded relations with Iran and issued statements against Israel’s right to defend itself following Hamas’ recent terror attacks,” Scott said in a recent statement.
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Also, according to the USAID dashboard, Washington gave South Africa $660 million in aid in 2023.
Herman Mashaba, president of the relatively new political party ActionSA, told Fox News Digital, “The ruling party prioritizes Cold War-era alliances above the interests of the South African people. Our close relationship with Russia has jeopardized investment into the country, which cost jobs which South Africa cannot risk losing.”
Public hearings in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel begins at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 11, 2024. (Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“At the same time, 86 people are killed in South Africa per day,” Mashaba continued. “Every 11 minutes, a woman is raped in this country. The ruling party has in 30 years been unable to address these crises and instead pays attention to everything except finding solutions to these issues.”
The State Department weighed in.
“Russia is waging a brutal war against the people of Ukraine, and we are constantly working to cut off support and funding for Putin’s war machine and to undercut Russia’s ability to carry out this conflict,” a department spokesperson said. “We have strongly urged countries not to support Russia’s war.”
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On Tehran, the State Department spokesperson noted, “Iran is an adversary and the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It seeks to sow instability in the Middle East and around the world.
“We call on all countries to condemn Hamas, as Hamas is a designated terrorist organization and deserves condemnation”.
J. Brooks Spector, a former U.S. diplomat and associate editor of The Daily Maverick, spoke of his concerns to Fox News Digital:
“South Africa has rarely supported America internationally in grave crises such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Members of the Economic Freedom Fighters protest on the street in Tsakane township, east of Johannesburg, South Africa, March 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
“Beyond AGOA eligibility, South Africa might find itself at risk of seeing the major American contributions of PEPFAR funds combating HIV/AIDS begin to lessen or even end, as funds are shifted to other nations.”
This would be disastrous. Even with support from the U.S., South Africa has the largest HIV epidemic in the world, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Part of the challenge for South Africa, going forward, is its desire for a foreign policy strategy that seeks to be a visible player in resolving international disputes far afield from its home continent such as Ukraine and Gaza, while largely ignoring equally urgent issues nearer to home,” Spector said.
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Firemen spray water on flames erupting from a building at South Africa’s Parliament in Cape Town Jan. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
South Africa has “a completely chaotic approach to foreign policy in recent years,” Emma Louise Powell told Fox News Digital. Powell is shadow minister for international relations for the country’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, or DA.
Powell criticized the government for getting involved in talks on the Israel-Hamas war, “given the bloodbath unfolding in South Africa’s backyard, on the African continent, in countries such as Sudan, the DRC and across West Africa. This is not to mention the political and economic crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe.
“South Africa has not even condemned Russia’s illegal invasion. This is intellectually dishonest, given the funding the ANC is receiving from Russian-linked oligarchs and companies, and we see that this position is leading to South Africa’s increasing isolation.”
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Senator Tim Scott has criticized the South African government over its dealings with US adversaries, and the country’s corruption problems. (Photo by Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) (Photo by Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images))
Spector added, “Such a mix of behaviors means South Africa risks becoming increasingly irrelevant internationally, both as a country with real political heft and as a valuable investment and trade partner with anyone besides China.”
Then there’s the systemic corruption. Two years ago, hundreds of senior politicians and businessmen, mostly linked to the ruling African National Congress, or ANC, were accused in the 5,000-page State Capture report for links to corruption, yet very few have been prosecuted.
“Many Washington foreign policy insiders are now for the first time seeing the ANC for what it has, sadly, become since (President Nelson) Mandela’s retirement, a party whose rampant financial corruption has impoverished South Africa’s people and led it to ally itself with America’s enemies including Russia, Iran and Hamas,” FDD’s Kittrie warned.
South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor addresses reporters after a session of the International Court of Justice, or World Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 26. (AP)
Earlier this week, Sen. Tim Scott tweeted, “The U.S. cannot continue to simply look the other way when it comes to corruption in South Africa. As we consider AGOA reauthorization, it’s important that we take steps to ensure the program’s eligibility requirements are actually enforced.”
The State Department is so concerned about corruption in South Africa it sent Fox News Digital an additional statement that some analysts say contains a veiled threat.
“The fight against corruption is a core U.S. national security interest,” the statement said. “The United States considers the use of several foreign policy tools for countering corruption, including but not limited to financial sanctions. Beyond this, it is the policy of the United States to not comment on internal deliberations regarding the use of sanctions or to preview potential actions.”
Kittrie added, “U.S. officials are noticing that the ANC is not itself holding its corrupt officials accountable, with the ANC-led South African government reportedly making no significant progress in prosecuting South African officials who were bribed and, most recently, the ANC placing several corruption-tainted officials on its list for re-election.”
Pinkie Sebitlo cooks using a coal stove during frequent power outages caused by South African utility Eskom’s aging coal-fired plants in Soweto, South Africa, June 23, 2022. (REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko)
Action SA’s Mashaba added “it is unacceptable that two years after the State Capture Report was submitted, not a single high-profile individual has successfully been prosecuted”
Last week, the South African Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, announced any South Africans with dual nationality who are fighting for Israel in Gaza will be arrested when they return.
“We are ready. When you come home, we will arrest you,” the minister said, referencing a long-standing law that South Africans may not fight in wars for other countries. Yet, when the Iraqi ambassador here claimed as many as 300 South Africans had left to take up arms for the terror group Islamic State in Syria in 2015, there were no such public threats of arrests for returning fighters.
Analysts predict Foreign Minister Pandor could face some tough questions during her visit to Washington, scheduled for this week.
The ANC government is likely to lose sole and majority power of South Africa in elections coming in May. Last week’s latest poll by the Brenthurst Foundation predicts the ANC will only get 39% of the vote. The party is likely to go into coalition, with analysts predicting this probably will be with the “revolutionary” EFF, the Economic Freedom Fighters.
A man brandishes a toy gun during a pro-Palestinian demonstration organized by the South African opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters in front of the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria Oct. 23, 2023. (Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images)
The EFF wants to grab White-owned farmland with no compensation, according to its election manifesto.
“As the EFF, we have never promised [White people] that we will not take the land. We don’t owe them anything,” EFF leader Julius Malema told cheering crowds at the manifesto’s launch.
And the China-leaning EFF warned the 600 U.S. companies operating in South Africa that if the Americans working for them don’t like the EFF’s policies, “they can leave with immediate effect.”
Fox News Digital reached out to both the South African Foreign Ministry and the ANC but did not receive a response.
Storm-1516, a Russia-linked influence operation — which routinely disseminates fabricated claims about Europe and the West — comes in all shapes and sizes.
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This time round, researchers say it could be behind a social media video in which alleged militants from Hezbollah — an Iran-backed Lebanese militant group — threatened to carry out attacks on French soil ahead of Bastille Day celebrations on 14 July.
In the video, three hooded men wearing military uniforms pose in front of a dummy of a French Foreign Legion soldier, whose face had the French flag painted on.
They threaten to “shed blood” on 14 July if France continues to “supply weapons” to the “Zionist regime”, in an apparent reference to Israel.
At the end of the clip, one man uses a knife to decapitate the dummy.
What do we know about this video?
The clip first spread on Telegram before moving to X and Facebook, gaining almost one million views across X posts.
In the content analysed by Euronews’s verification team, The Cube, the men don’t make an explicit reference to the group they belong to. However, the arm patch on the men’s uniform resembles Hezbollah, whose armed wing is classified as a terrorist organisation by the European Union.
In addition, social media posts also refer to them as Hezbollah.
However, there is a series of clues which suggest the video is fake. To begin, the video does not bear the group’s logo, which is typically included in content disseminated on its official channels.
Colleagues from Euronews Arabic-speaking service also told us that the accent resembled Levantine Arabic but not a Lebanese Arabic accent, adding that the speaker made multiple grammatical mistakes. This suggests that the video does not belong to Hezbollah.
Fact-checkers from AFP reported that the video spread through a series of posts published on the same day by a network of accounts that regularly use pro-Russian narratives.
They include accounts that are favourable to the Alliance of Sahel States, a group of countries that includes Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, has ties to Iran and is openly anti-Western.
Fact-checkers have also reported that the video was picked up by anti-Israel accounts, as well as by users who regularly reshare conspiracy theories.
Storm-1516’s changing faces
The video bears similarities to other content connected to the Storm-1516 disinformation campaign, as well as fake content targeting Ukraine and Western countries.
The network produces a wide variety of content, which includes impersonating European journalists and news outlets, paying actors to pose as fake whistleblowers, and increasingly incorporating AI-generated content into its operations.
Researchers have highlighted similarities between the latest fake Hezbollah clip and other Russia-linked content — including a clip flagged by the Gnida project, an anonymous research group tracking Russian influence operations, which was published in January 2025.
The video in question showed individuals claiming to belong to HTS — the Islamist group formerly led by Syria’s current president, Ahmed al-Sharaa — threaten to burn down Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, unless French authorities release Brahim Aouissaoui. The latter, a Tunisian citizen, killed three people during a terror attack he carried out in Nice in 2020.
Another example was a video purporting to show Hamas threatening attacks in France ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics. Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center examined the clip and deemed it to be consistent with Storm-1516’s tactics, while Hamas denied producing the video.
The 2026 World Cup final is set. A match between the reigning world champions versus the reigning European champions. Between the sport’s greatest player in history, Lionel Messi, versus its ascendant teenage prodigy, Lamine Yamal. It will be Argentina versus Spain, Sunday in East Rutherford, N.J.
The irrepressible Albiceleste overcame a 1-0 deficit against England in Wednesday’s semifinal, equalizing in the 85th minute and knocking in a go-ahead goal in extra time to send Argentina to its second consecutive World Cup final. Spain, meanwhile, is seeking to add a second star to its national jersey and first since 2010.
At stake in global soccer’s greatest match is more than just sporting history, however. Below, four takeaways for the business of soccer based on the Argentina-Spain matchup.
A battle of the high rollers
Lionel Messi, at 39, remains soccer’s best-paid endorser, raking in $70 million in off-pitch earnings for the current season, according to Sportico estimates. With his annual contract at Inter Miami earning him an additional $70 million, he is the sport’s second-highest paid player in the entire World Cup field behind only Cristiano Ronaldo. Overall, Messi is the fifth-highest paid athlete of all time, with $1.99 billion in career earnings.
But Lamine Yamal, the 19-year-old wunderkind from Spain, is no slouch: He’s earned $33 million this past year from Barcelona, and an additional $10 million from sponsors like Adidas and American Eagle. Currently ranked No. 10 among Sportico’s highest paid World Cup footballers, Yamal could leapfrog a few places higher by the next World Cup, particularly if he burnishes his already impressive resumé with a strong showing and a Spain victory on Sunday.
A knockout victory for Adidas
Sunday’s final will be an all-Adidas affair, with the company outfitting both Spain and Argentina and pitting two of its marquee stars against one another.
The last Adidas vs. Adidas World Cup final was Germany against Argentina in 2014. That year, Adidas saw currency-neutral sales of soccer products rise by 20% to $2.4 billion (€2.1 billion).
An Adidas spokeswoman declined to specify sales projections for the 2026 World Cup but said in a statement that the company is “proud” to outfit both finalists at this year’s tournament.
Archrival Nike made a splashy entrance into this year’s World Cup, with a star-studded commercial honoring stars like Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland, the latter of whom became a breakout hit in the U.S. But instead of the World Cup trophy, Nike walks away from the 2026 tournament with the rights to Germany’s national team.
FIFA’s ticket pricing
As of Wednesday evening, get-in prices for Sunday’s final started at $8,900 in the nosebleeds, per Ticketmaster, while lower-bowl seats ran as high as $24,000.
But unlike the lead-up to the tournament’s group stage matches, where the sticker shock for four-figure ticket prices led to large blocks of seats going unsold until the last minute, only a handful of seats to Sunday’s final were available for resale on Ticketmaster.
The result is a reflection of FIFA’s ticket pricing strategy for the North American-hosted World Cup: set prices eye-poppingly high from the jump and limit the flow of cash into reseller’s hands.
Soccer’s Hottest Clubs: La Liga and MLS
A Spain and Argentina final reflects well on Spain’s LaLiga after the professional men’s league failed to put a representative in the Champions League final for a second year in a row. A whopping 17 players on La Roja’s roster come from the domestic top-flight league– of whom eight play for Barcelona, while the lion’s share of players for Argentina (7) also play within LaLiga.
And while MLS can’t compete on quantity of players taking the pitch on Sunday, the ability to market around Inter Miami star Messi into and through the final match is the dream scenario for the U.S. league. This week, MLS launched a new campaign aimed at converting World Cup fans to year-round club supporters, anchored by Messi and ubiquitous pitchman and England legend David Beckham. Some 22 of the league’s 30 clubs are offering complimentary single-game tickets to first-time MLS match attendees.
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President Donald Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, even as Moscow warned Wednesday that Western troops deployed to enforce any eventual peace deal would become Russian military targets.
“I say, ‘Vladimir, it’s time for you to stop. It’s time for this war to end,’” Trump told Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst in an interview released Tuesday.
Trump said he believed Putin was “ready to make a deal” to end the fighting.
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Meanwhile, fighting continued across Ukraine and Russian-occupied territory.
The intensifying drone war has forced both militaries to search for additional ways to intercept unmanned aircraft, sometimes using weapons designed decades before modern drones emerged.
A video supplied by East2West shows a Russian soldier apparently losing control of a Soviet-era YakB-12.7 rotary machine gun mounted on an improvised ground platform.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump meet in 2019, before their relationship began to sour. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
The weapon begins spinning violently, dragging the service member around before throwing him several yards from the mounting. Another soldier ducks as the gun swings in his direction.
East2West reported that no one was injured, though Fox News Digital has not independently verified the location, date or circumstances of the footage.
The four-barrel machine gun was originally developed for use aboard the Soviet-designed Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter. Russian forces have reportedly attempted to repurpose such weapons as ground-based defenses against Ukrainian drones, East2West news reported.
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An explosion lights up the sky over the city during a Russian missile and drone strike amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine in Kyiv July 2, 2026. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said any multinational force deployed by Ukraine’s allies after a ceasefire would be unacceptable to Moscow.
“We would regard such units as legitimate military targets,” Zakharova said, according to a Reuters report published Wednesday.
Members of the Western “coalition of the willing” reaffirmed at a meeting in Paris this week that they intend to deploy a multinational force after hostilities end. The proposed force would seek to reassure Ukraine and help Kyiv rebuild its military.
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Ukraine’s military said Wednesday that its forces struck the Balaklava thermal power station in Russian-occupied Crimea, a facility that accounts for nearly half of the peninsula’s electricity generation, according to Reuters.
Russia, meanwhile, launched another major drone and missile attack against Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, killing three people, regional Governor Oleh Kiper said. He said civilian, industrial and port infrastructure had been targeted during five consecutive days of Russian attacks.
Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a vehicle fire after a Russian drone attack in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, May 5, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service/AP)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also said Wednesday that Ukraine expects to develop the technical capability to manufacture missiles for U.S.-made Patriot air-defense systems by the end of 2026.
Reuters contributed to this story.
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