South Africa and the International Court of Justice (ICJ): a new path to African agency?

Between December 2023 and January 2024, South Africa brought a case before International Court of Justice (ICJ), arguing that the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza since early October 2023 amounted to genocide. This marks a moment in global politics when an African state has used its agency to affect change in international affairs beyond its involvement in the non-aligned movement and beyond Global South bodies such as the BRICS. The case opens new areas of research to understand African agency. International relations theories such as constructivism and neo-liberalism can be used to explain why South Africa took the case by focusing on South Africa’s post-apartheid human rights foreign policy. However, while these theories may increase our understanding of why South Africa took the action, they are limited in their ability to explain South Africa’s agency. A multi-factoral, multi-level foreign policy explanation is needed to show how idiosyncratic factors – ­especially a unique history of apartheid and a decades-long bond of solidarity between the ANC and Palestinian liberation movements – made South African politicians draw on a tradition of African normative agency as they answered the call of history in front of both domestic and international audiences.