South Africa boosts coal exports to Israel des­pite tak­ing it to court in gen­o­cide case

Crit­ics have slammed the South African gov­ern­ment, accus­ing it of hypo­crisy, because of the coun­try’s coal exports to Israel that have accel­er­ated in the past two years des­pite Pre­toria’s gen­o­cide case against Israel at the Inter­na­tional Court of Justice (ICJ).

An extens­ive report titled Fuel­ling Gen­o­cide, authored by Sirhaan Ché Khan, an inter­na­tional law expert and human rights law­yer, was handed to rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Depart­ment of Trade, Industry and Com­pet­i­tion (DTIC) in Pre­toria on 23 March for the atten­tion of Min­is­ter Parks Tau.

The report was com­mis­sioned by the South African Boy­cott, Divest­ment, Sanc­tions (BDS) Coali­tion, a group of local organ­isa­tions crit­ical of Israel’s treat­ment of Palestini­ans.

“We star­ted work­ing on the 264-page doc­u­ment last August fol­low­ing col­lect­ive frus­tra­tion at the South African gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued coal exports to Israel and its ini­tial refusal to engage with its crit­ics over the mat­ter,” Khan said.

However, DTIC spokes­per­son Kaamil Alli told Daily Mav­er­ick that “it was import­ant to note the offi­cial pos­i­tion of the South African gov­ern­ment on this mat­ter, which is reflec­ted in our case at the ICJ”.

But this is exactly what has angered crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment. “Our frus­tra­tion was exacer­bated by the dis­crep­ancy between the pos­i­tion of the South African gov­ern­ment and the grow­ing exports of coal sup­plies to Israel by busi­nesses, and this is what motiv­ated the invest­ig­at­ive report and us tak­ing fur­ther action,” said Khan.

“South Africa’s ongo­ing coal exports to Israel must end. The com­pli­city in gen­o­cide, occu­pa­tion and apartheid must end.”

It is argued in the report that the threshold for com­pli­city under inter­na­tional law holds clear. As artic­u­lated by the ICJ in the gen­o­cide case of Bos­nia and Herzegov­ina v Ser­bia and Montenegro, state respons­ib­il­ity for com­pli­city arises where a state knew, or should have known, that gen­o­cide was immin­ent or occur­ring and non­ethe­less provided mater­ial aid that had a sub­stan­tial effect on its com­mis­sion.

“This report details how South Africa’s coal trade with Israel amounts to such mater­ial aid for an ongo­ing gen­o­cide and unlaw­ful occu­pa­tion,” said Khan.

SA’S exports to Israel

South Africa exports a vari­ety of goods to Israel, includ­ing fruit, veget­ables, pre­cious stones, steel, chem­ical products and other mis­cel­laneous goods. Its imports from Israel primar­ily con­sist of indus­trial, chem­ical and agri­cul­tural products.

South Africa’s exports to Israel have declined over the past dec­ade, accord­ing to Trad­ing Eco­nom­ics, but coal exports are the excep­tion. Reu­ters repor­ted that South Africa had boos­ted its coal exports after Colom­bia ceased all its coal exports in August 2025 in the wake of the Gaza gen­o­cide.

Both Colom­bia and South Africa, hitherto the main export­ers of coal to Israel, with South Africa still one, are fierce crit­ics of Israel and are mem­bers of The Hague Group, which was formed to sup­port rul­ings of the ICJ and the Inter­na­tional Crim­inal Court in rela­tion to the Israeli-palestinian con­flict.

“South Africa issued a joint state­ment with Colom­bia reaf­firm­ing their com­mit­ment to ensure that their trade, fin­an­cial sys­tems and cor­por­ate activ­it­ies do not con­trib­ute to viol­a­tions of inter­na­tional human­it­arian law in Palestine,” said Khan.

“The Hague Group com­mit­ments are con­crete meas­ures adop­ted by states, includ­ing South

Africa, to imple­ment their oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tional law,” he added.

The Hague state­ment out­lined the agreed actions to pre­vent trade, fin­an­cial and sup­ply chain activ­ity from con­trib­ut­ing to gen­o­cide and other inter­na­tional crimes, and demon­strates that South Africa’s con­tin­ued coal exports dir­ectly con­tra­dict these com­mit­ments and the legal duties they reflect.

BDS mon­itored at least 17 ves­sels being loaded at Richards Bay, between Octo­ber 2023 and Decem­ber 2025, which trans­por­ted at least 2.99 mil­lion tonnes of coal to Israel, accord­ing to the South African Rev­enue Ser­vice.

This track­ing was made pos­sible by act­iv­ists and research­ers who mon­itored ship move­ments and veri­fied coal car­goes, often in real time, using open-source mari­time intel­li­gence tools.

The ship­ments were unloaded at the ports of Hadera and Ashkelon in Israel, prompt­ing wide-scale protests and pub­lic con­dem­na­tion at Glen­core and DTIC premises.

“The Hague state­ment emphas­ised the duty of states to review and, where neces­sary, sus­pend trade rela­tion­ships, sup­ply chains and eco­nomic activ­it­ies that risk facil­it­at­ing war crimes, crimes against human­ity or gen­o­cide, and called on gov­ern­ments to employ all avail­able reg­u­lat­ory and legal mech­an­isms to pre­vent cor­por­ate com­pli­city in such acts,” said Khan.

Invis­ible back­bone of Israel’s

mil­it­ary machine

Khan argues in his report that coal sup­ports Israeli elec­tri­city and is used to power mil­it­ary install­a­tions

and com­mand centres, weapons man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­it­ies, drones, tanks, check­points and sur­veil­lance sys­tems oper­ated by the Israel Defense Forces.

“Elec­tri­city is the invis­ible back­bone of Israel’s mil­it­ary machine. Every dimen­sion of its mod­ern war­fare appar­atus … depends on unin­ter­rup­ted elec­trical sup­ply, includ­ing Israel’s chilling arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tems and algorithms that sort Palestini­ans by ‘sus­pi­cion level’ and determ­ine tar­get­ing for drone strikes,” said Khan.

After meet­ing with the act­iv­ists out­side the DTIC’S office in Pre­toria, Alli told Daily Mav­er­ick that “the issues raised in the meet­ing … remain com­plex and are handled with a great degree of sens­it­iv­ity”.

But Khan said that pre­vi­ous objec­tions to the ship­ping of coal included fears that there could be a legal back­lash from busi­ness cor­por­a­tions involved in the exports.

“South Africa has detailed know­ledge of what is hap­pen­ing in Gaza and the Israelioc­cu­pied West Bank fol­low­ing its ICJ case,” Khan told Daily Mav­er­ick.

“And being afraid of a back­lash from min­ing com­pan­ies is not an excuse to aban­don its legal oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tional law. The con­tin­ued exports amount to mater­ial sup­port for inter­na­tion­ally wrong­ful acts and place South Africa in breach of its inter­na­tional oblig­a­tions,” he added.

Asked whether the DTIC would be invest­ig­at­ing the mat­ter and tak­ing fur­ther action, Alli said it “should be noted that our sis­ter depart­ment [the Depart­ment of Inter­na­tional Rela­tions and Cooper­a­tion] as well as Cab­inet in gen­eral play an integ­ral role in this, and so con­sulta­tions with them will also have to be under­taken on this mat­ter.

“The doc­u­ment handed to the depart­ment [last week] is extens­ive and will require time to pro­cess intern­ally before an offi­cial pos­i­tion can be taken by the min­is­ter on the con­tents. As a res­ult, we can­not com­ment on the details therein,” said Alli.

Khan con­firmed that the report would also be handed to other rel­ev­ant gov­ern­ment depart­ments.

“These exports are under­taken by private cor­por­a­tions oper­at­ing within South Africa’s jur­is­dic­tion using state-reg­u­lated infra­struc­ture, ports, licens­ing sys­tems and export per­mis­sions,” said Khan.

“The South African state does not itself mine or sell the coal, but it exer­cises decis­ive reg­u­lat­ory author­ity over whether such exports may law­fully occur. Accord­ingly, the legal respons­ib­il­ity addressed in this report arises from the state’s fail­ure to exer­cise avail­able legal powers to pre­vent or sus­pend exports that risk con­trib­ut­ing to inter­na­tion­ally wrong­ful acts,”

said Khan.