South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has strongly rejected the latest U.S. Human Rights Report on South Africa, calling it inaccurate, biased, and a distortion of the country’s constitutional reality.
The 21-page document, released by Washington this week, claimed that South Africa’s human rights situation had “significantly worsened,” citing land expropriations from Afrikaners, “abuses against racial minorities,” and alleged extrajudicial killings in provinces like KwaZulu-Natal.
DIRCO dismissed the claims as misleading, stressing that criminal suspects are formally arraigned in court and that the report relied on “discredited accounts.”
The department also criticized the U.S. for issuing judgments on other countries while itself refusing supervision by international mechanisms like the U.N. Human Rights Council. It noted America’s own unresolved human rights challenges, including racial inequality and systemic violence.