In a media statement, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said it had informed Israel of its decision to declare Ariel Seidman, the chargé d’affaires at the embassy and Israel’s top diplomat in the country, persona non grata.

South African officials said the move was based on what they described as violations of diplomatic norms, including alleged use of official Israeli platforms to criticize South African leadership and failure to notify authorities about visits by senior Israeli officials.

“These violations include the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks against His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, and a deliberate failure to inform DIRCO [South Africa’s foreign affairs ministry] of purported visits by senior Israeli officials,” said the statement by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, South Africa’s foreign ministry.

In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry designated South Africa’s top diplomat in the country, Minister Shaun Edward Byneveldt, persona non grata, saying he must leave Israel within 72 hours, and that “additional steps will be considered in due course.”

The United States objected to South Africa’s high-profile genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, a move viewed in Washington as targeting a close American ally.

President Donald Trump last year froze most U.S. aid to Pretoria, citing what he described as the country’s “aggressive positions” toward Washington, including its close ties with Russia and Iran as well as the ICJ case against Israel.

Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Leo Brent Bozell has said that defending American policy on Israel will be a “top priority” when he assumes the post.

The South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) condemned the ANC government’s decision to declare Israel’s chargé d’affaires persona non grata, accusing the ruling party of prioritizing ideology over the needs of South African citizens.

“The ANC government’s decision to expel Israel’s chargé d’affaires is an act of staggering moral bankruptcy and exposes a leadership more committed to ideological hostility than to the welfare of the people it has failed,” the organization said in a statement.

The SAZF said the decision appeared to target Israeli humanitarian cooperation efforts, including projects aimed at improving access to clean water in underserved communities, particularly in parts of the Eastern Cape.

“A diplomat was declared persona non grata not for espionage, not for misconduct, not for breaching protocol, but for helping South Africans access clean water,” the statement said.

The organization criticized South Africa’s broader foreign policy posture, arguing that humanitarian engagement with civil society and traditional leadership structures is standard diplomatic practice globally.

“The ANC has once again demonstrated that it will sacrifice the lived needs of South Africans on the altar of factional obsession and imported political hatred,” it said. “It has chosen performative rage over practical relief, dogma over dignity, optics over lives.”

The SAZF said blocking such cooperation would ultimately harm vulnerable communities and warned that essential services such as access to clean water should not become entangled in geopolitical disputes.

“When a government blocks water to make a political point, it forfeits any claim to moral authority. When humanitarian assistance is rejected because it exposes failure, the rot is complete,” it said.

“South Africans deserve water. They deserve dignity. They deserve solutions,” the statement added. “They do not deserve a government so brittle, so cynical, and so morally bankrupt that compassion itself becomes a political threat. Our beautiful South Africa deserves better than this. Cry, the Thirsty Country.”