Much of the underlying narrative about this election is about the amorality of the governing ANC of the past 15 odd years.
As the prime representative of the ANC this is no more articulately expressed than the message of condolence that President Cyril Ramaphosa sent to the Islamic Republic of Iran on the death of its president, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi.
The President said: “This is an extraordinary, unthinkable tragedy that has claimed a remarkable leader of a nation with whom South Africa enjoys strong bilateral relations”.
The problems with that message are twofold: first, it is neither an “extraordinary” nor “unthinkable” tragedy. It is sudden and unexpected, but these incidents do occur periodically particularly to leadership figures who have access to transport such as helicopters, and fatal accidents do occur.
Second, South Africa’s bilateral relations are, in reality, the ANC’s bilateral relations. If South Africans had a choice in the matter, it is unlikely such relations would exist. And it is the person of Raisi that this appalling choice of ally was well reflected.
Committee
At the age of 25 in 1988 he became a member of a committee of four ‘jurists’, who at the behest of the ruling theocratic elite, ordered the execution of thousands of opponents to the regime. This occurred in the space of five months. Most of them were young and were already serving lesser prison sentences. It isn’t clear how many people were put to death; the estimates range from 2,000 to 35,000 people. Raisi has never expressed a scintilla of regret.
Raisi was a religious and political purist: he was a protégé of the Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As attorney-general from 2014 Iran’s execution rate, often public, became the highest in the world. Amnesty International has recorded 853 executions in 2023. The number of executions in 2023 are the highest recorded since 2015; they mark a 48% increase from 2022 and a 172% increase from 2021.
More than half of the executions are for drug offences and hit the poor the hardest. The remainder were mostly political prisoners: the ANC, of all organisations, should have been appalled by these latter executions.
As the head of the judiciary in 2019 he brutally suppressed protest against fuel price increases.
His succession to the presidency only succeeded in 2021 after the Khamenei-dominated Guardian Council disqualified all other candidates.
Morality police
One of his early presidential decisions was to crack down on ‘female modesty’ and ‘chastity’. The result? The death, as a result of being in the custody of the “morality police’ of Mahsa Jina Amini for not wearing her hijab in the correct manner. The resultant protests were the largest in the regime’s history.
Despite income earned from the rise in oil exports due to the US lifting sanctions, high levels of inflation have left poor and middle-class Iranians seeing their living standards decline.
Raisi was particularly loathed by many Iranian women. He was a symbol of what is wrong with the regime’s attitude to women. Even at the United Nations, where Iran was removed from the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2022.
The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Narges Mohammadi, was and remains in prison In Iran. She has already served over 12 years in prison. Her teenage children, who accepted her prize in Norway, read her speech which had been smuggled out of prison.
Presumably the ANC knows what a dreadful regime it is cosying up to. Ramaphosa’s “unthinkable tragedy” of Raisi’s death is a reflection of that knowledge. If the ANC understands what the ideology of the regime is, then it supports a regime whose fundamental ideology includes the genocide of the Jews being key to its apocalyptic purpose. Destruction of the Jews is necessary to ensure the realisation of the mullahs’ ideology of the return of the Mahdi and the end of times.
Mahdism
Iran is a Shia theocratic state premised on a belief in Mahdism; that the 12th divinely ordained Shi’a imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi (the Hidden Imam), will return to rid the world of evil and injustice. His coming will bring about a final apocalyptic battle between two armies: the Mahdi and his forces will prevail over evil.
The Mahdi was considered ‘hidden’, that is that he was withdrawn into a miraculous state of occultation (hiddenness) by God in 874.
The only form of legitimate government was an Imamate (Shi’a Islamic state), which could only exist under the leadership of the divinely ordained infallible imams. The 12th Imam would appear on his own accord, when injustice and evil captures the world. He would be accompanied by 313 special fighters, who would defeat evil and act as the Shi’a ummah’s saviour against the non-believers.
Shi’a Islam became Iran’s official state religion during the Safavid Dynasty in 1501. The majority Shi’a political doctrine ruled that any form of government during the Major Occultation was illegitimate.
During the occultation, the clergy’s role would be confined to the spiritual and religious realm. This quietist political doctrine lasted until the revolution in 1979.
Sharia
The leader of the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeinei, theorised that all political power would be transferred to the Shi’a clergy as the creation of divine law (sharia), supported clerical rule. The clergy knew Islam best, so it was natural that they should rule the state until the Mahdi returned.
Until then all political and religious authority was to be transferred to a supreme clerical leader, who would have custody over the Shi’a ummah as the imam’s deputy and God’s representative on Earth.
Khomeini introduced the idea that instead of waiting passively for the 12th Imam, Shi’a Muslims must prepare for his arrival – be politically active, form an Islamic government, and prepare for the Mahdi’s global revolution.
After 1979 clerical rule became enshrined in Iran’s constitution, with Iran’s supreme leader, Khomeini, ruling as the Mahdi’s deputy.
The Islamic Revolution completed the first stage of the return of the Mahdi.
The Mahdi doctrine became more extreme in the late 1990s under the current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He claimed it was necessary to create an ideal Islamic society based on Mahdism.
Khameini set out five necessary revolutionary stages: an Islamic Revolution, an Islamic regime, an Islamic government, an Islamic society, and an Islamic civilisation. Khamenei held that Iran had only achieved the first two stages.
Cult
In 2005 the election of the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president took Mahdism to another level, by finding ways to speed up the Mahdi’s return: the ‘Cult of Mahdism’ arose.
It proclaimed that Ahmadinejad and Khameini were Shu’ayb bin Salih and Seyed Khorasani respectively — two men who would appear before the Mahdi’s return.
In 2009 anti-regime protests erupted due to the rigging of the presidential elections, resulting in the regime doubling down on the hardline ideology.
The regime decided it needed to nurture a more ideologically zealous generation of youth.
Ali Akbar Raefipour, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and staunch advocate of extreme Mahdism, gained considerable traction among Islamist youth. These youth came to form the core constituency recruited for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Khamenei’s circle became more radical, viewing all contemporary world events in the context of Mahdism.
In 2020 one hardline cleric claimed that Covid-19 was the “preamble to the reappearance of Mahdi.” He drew parallels between Covid and the “all encompassing plague” that Islamic scripture describes as a sign of the nearing of the end of times.
In February 2022 Khamenei lent his support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by asserting that Islam was in a permanent war with the age of barbarism and ignorance, the modern form of which was the US.
In March 2022, the head of the Office of the Supreme Leader asserted support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He described it as a “prelude to the reappearance of the Lord of the Age”.
Syria
Involving the IRGC Quds Force in fighting in Syria was seen as laying the ground for preparing for the the Mahdi. The current era is seen as representing the final period of history ahead of the 12th Imam. The world being divided between the “will of the essence of transcendence” and “the arrogant powers” – “the people and the leadership of Iran” versus the latter including “Zionism, Wahhabi Zionism, and Christian Zionism.”
The clergy affiliated to the IRGC claim that religious hadiths state that the “Jewish state will be destroyed before Mahdi’s arrival”. The collapse of the “Israeli regime and Zionist Jews” at the behest of “Iran and the Resistance Axis” will take place “prior to the emergence of Mahdi”.
Such claim that the war with Israel will take place after a world war.
Senior hardline cleric Mehdi Taeb said in 2015: “Observers must remove the obstacles to the emergence of the Imam of the Age, the most important of which is the existence of the usurper regime of Israel”.
Taeb explained that as the U.S. is doing all in its power to ensure the security of the Israel, Iran must ensure “this security is destroyed”.
The IRGC has redefined waiting for the reappearance of the Mahdi as being about proactively preparing to assist the Mahdi to establish the rule of justice throughout the world by being on a “war footing”. This delusion is presented as fighting “oppression, injustice, discrimination, and coercion everywhere in the world”.
Rejecting
Rejecting the liberal international rules-based order is presented as paving the way for the Mahdi.
Based on Islamic hadiths and historic Shi’a narrations, the militaristic doctrine of Mahdism also calls on Shi’a populations to take up arms in preparation for the end times.
The Shia regime is not enabling Sunni Hamas because it cares about the Sunni Muslim Palestinians. Hamas support is a means to obliterating Israel.
The religious enmity between Shia and Sunni Islam is profound, except, when co-operation represents an alliance to defeat Islam’s enemies.
The ANC therefore either supports a genocidal, death cult because it is ignorant – a useful idiot – or because all its railing against the West is just a feint to disguise its complete amorality for its own material benefit.
Iran’s armoury is the IRGC, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In Iraq it supports Kata’ib Hizballah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq; in Bahrain the al-Ashtar Brigades and Saraya al-Mukhtar. This is not a complete list.
Senior Al Q’aida members live in Iran.
Iran has planned or executed terror attacks in Argentina, the Netherlands, Belgium, Albania, Denmark, the US, and Turkey, amongst others.
We know that the ANC has moved from South Africa’s foreign affairs principle being based on human rights to one based on self-interest. That’s per se not a problem, unless the self-interest is the ANC’s not South Africa’s.
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