Writing on recent developments between Israel and Eswatini, Ruehl Muller argues that Israel is using Eswatini as a stage for its self-destructive psychopolitical theatre. According to Muller, Israel’s growing presence in Southern Africa poses a direct threat to regional stability and the region’s ongoing democratic project.
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By Ruehl Muller
As Israel faces growing international isolation over its genocide in Gaza, a disappointing but perhaps not unexpected alliance is forming closer to home. Eswatini, it seems, is keen on warming its ties with Tel Aviv.
This budding Swazi-Israeli friendship is not entirely new. Back in 2018, Swaziland News exposed a controversial arms deal in which Eswatini paid over R12-million to Clayford Holdings, a company linked to the Israeli weapons industry [1]. A year later, the Times of Swaziland reported a R1.2-billion cyber-security agreement between Eswatini and Israel Aerospace Industries. Now, we may soon see the re-establishment of an Israeli embassy in Mbabane (or even the relocation to Mbabane of the on-again-off-again Israeli diplomatic mission in Pretoria). This, however, shouldn’t be met with typical South African apathy.
Israel’s fingerprints on regional instability are starting to grow, and it would seem South Africa may be a target. In the DRC, for example, South African General Maomela Motau recently suggested that the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels are actively using weapons supplied from outside the region. “The weapon I saw, I believe, is one used by the armed forces of Israel,” he noted, stating that the M23 rebels are “outfitted like a regular army, not guerrillas”.
While this could be chalked up to simple arms dealings, one should also consider the strange case of Tsepo Lipholo, an MP from Lesotho, who has built his political career on a controversial movement to reclaim large swathes of South African territory (including the Free State, the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, and chunks of the Eastern Cape). Lipholo’s trip to the UN to press this claim was, according to reports, financed by Israel.
Why would Israel care to fund some fringe politician on an obviously futile mission, from a country that, to quote Israeli ally Trump, “nobody has ever heard of”?
The obvious answer it would seem is an attempt to sow political and perhaps ethnic tensions in the hopes of destabilising South Africa. South Africa is, after all, leading the international legal charge against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, so any means to discredit South Africa as a reputable voice works in their favour. This tactic was more observable recently when the US, amid mass-deportations, offered refugee status to white Afrikaners, with Trump citing so-called “persecutions” and some right-wing pundits, including Musk, pushing the “white genocide” fantasy. After all, how can one genocidaire condemn another?
However, this answer overlooks an important factor that separates Israel from the typical imperialist meddling in Southern African affairs that we have come to know: the futility of Lipholo’s mission. Lipholo, embracing this fantasy of land reclamation, has already been condemned by Lesotho’s parliament and is bound for failure—and this is where the parallels with Israel should be noted. What is Israel if not a fantasy of land reclamation bound for failure? Where typical US meddling is driven by the overriding logic of advancing its own self-interest, by highly unscrupulous means, Israel is grounded in fantasy-induced autotelic self-destruction.
Fascism, at its core, is simply the formalisation of fantasy: the fostering of a mythological past destroyed by a mythological enemy. Mussolini desired for a new Roman empire (à la “Make Rome Great Again”). Hitler offered a mythological caricature of Jews as an easy explanation to all confusions and problems. For Netanyahu, God promised the Israelites the land of Israel (by ordering them to wipe out the nation of Amalek). It should therefore come as no surprise that in January 2024, Netanyahu referred to the Palestinians in Gaza as the Amalek, ‘reminding’ Israeli soldiers that they “were part of a legacy that goes back 3,000 years” and to “remember what Amalek has done to you”.
These fantasies aren’t just lies but necessary illusions that help individuals cope with an otherwise disjointed social reality. In response to the fragmentation and alienation of modern life, fascism offers imagined coherence and purpose wherein, rather than resolving the chaos, it imposes a symbolic order. This shouldn’t be seen merely as stupidity or ideological surrender but a means of precipitating social formation wherein the fantasy serves as doxa. In this sense, we should not make the mistake of reading this embrace of fantasy as a means to an end but rather as the end in itself; it is not a matter of telling a lie to reach a greater goal, but formalising the lie as the truth—the lie itself is the greater goal—for without the imposed symbolic order, nothing else can exist. Much like how Zionists weaponise anti-Semitism accusations, equating fair criticisms of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism and undermining the credibility of real anti-Semitism thereby threatening Jewish safety. Or, inversely, recall how the Nazis would come to extensively use their trains for the futile deportation of Jews in 1944, rather than for moving much-needed military supplies.
This reading of Israel’s political logic helps illuminate its seemingly irrational actions and foreign engagements. The alliance with Eswatini is no different to that with Lipholo for instance. It is less about mutual strategic benefit than about projecting and sustaining this fantasy-driven worldview outward. Eswatini, while itself operating within a framework of mythologised (royal) entitlements and histories, becomes a stage upon which Israel can extend its symbolic order. In Lacanian terms, Israel’s foreign engagements serve as a kind of “mirror stage,” a way of seeing its fantasy reflected and thus affirmed in the external world. The choice of a small, autocratic partner shouldn’t be lost on us either. It presents minimal resistance to this projection and allows Israel to continue operating within its closed circuit of ideological coherence. Swazis should understand that this is not a partnership of equals, but a psychopolitical manoeuvre—a way for Israel to reinscribe its fantasy structure globally, masking internal contradictions by externalising them onto compliant or disengaged others.
Eswatini is, of course, a sovereign nation. It is free to pursue an “Eswatini First” policy—or perhaps we should be more honest and say “Monarchy First”—if it so chooses. It did in 1978 when the Prime Minister, under the command of King Sobhuza II, urged the US and UK to vote against UN sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, according to recently declassified documents. But sovereignty does not exist in a vacuum. If Eswatini’s decisions threaten to invite unchecked destabilising foreign powers into South Africa’s backyard, South Africa is equally obligated to defend its interests by supporting organisations beneficial to its own safeguarding, irrespective to the obstacles they may pose to the Swazi regime.
One such example is the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS)—possibly the most vocal Swazi organisation in condemning Israel’s presence in the country. As it stands, there is no official recognition for the organisation, despite it being headquartered in South Africa. While we are all accustomed to ANC capitulation—and have come to learn that, in the case of Eswatini, the maintaining of economic interests between certain individuals and the Swazi regime seemingly outweighs the importance of national security (and supposed core principles)—it is unsettling to know that there is even a lack of bilateral ties between CPS and South African Communist Party, save for the odd affirmation of “solidarity.” There exists no logistical or material support.
It would do the Swazi regime well to understand that Israel does not see a partner in Eswatini; it sees a stage upon which to rehearse its self-destructive psychopolitical theatre. Allowing Israel to establish such “partnerships” on South Africa’s borders—without South African oversight—is a direct threat to regional stability and the ongoing democratic project therein, ultimately rendering it a provocation that will, we hope, compel South Africa to forge its own partnerships rooted in safeguarding national and regional security from the destabilising effects of fascistic fantasy.
[1] Dlamini, Z.M. 2018. “Swaziland, Israel and the Multimillion ‘Spying’ Arms Deal.” September 4. Swaziland News.
Ruehl Muller is a South African researcher and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Creativity and Innovation, based at Xiamen University, China. He writes in his personal capacity.
Featured photograph: Israeli President Isaac Herzog receives Eswatini’s Ambassador to Israel, Mahlaba Almon Mamba, at his official residence (March 2024, Wikicommons).
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