We are looking for answers to SA’s perplexing foreign policy actions in all the wrong places.
In our shock and confusion over the ANC and SA’s support for Russia’s illegal invasion of a smaller, weaker, independent neighbour, we are seeking rational reasons for why SA is jeopardising its own people’s interests for the embrace of Russia, a country with which it shares few values and even fewer economic ties.
The business organisation, Business Unity South Africa, for example, pleaded with President Cyril Ramaphosa to come clean on whether our country shipped arms to Russia to limit the damage being done to relations with the US.
Busa underlined that the US was SA’s second-biggest trading partner after China.
“It is extremely important for us to maintain good relations with the US, as it is in our interests to maintain good relationships with China and other major trading partners,” Busa chief executive Cas Coovadia said.
Coovadia is not wrong, and he is not alone.
Across the globe, businesspeople, diplomats, analysts and others are asking why SA is behaving so irrationally in a matter where it does not need to be shooting itself in the foot in the manner that it has done over the past year.
To many observers, SA seems to not just have abandoned self-interest, but to be actively sabotaging itself on the world stage.
That is where many of us are making a mistake, though.
This is neither rational nor sensible.
Having a sensible discussion with Pretoria about the amount of trade that SA stands to lose if relations with the US are jeopardised will not change a thing.
Telling our leaders that Russia is a kleptocracy where opposition leaders, journalists, human rights activists and other civil society leaders are routinely jailed, will not cut it.
Even exposing the ANC lie that Russia supported it during the struggle against apartheid will not make a difference.
We all know that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — of which Ukraine was part — supported the ANC.
We also know that most of those ANC soldiers who trained in the USSR were in Kyiv or Odesa in Ukraine rather than in Moscow or St Petersburg.
Yet, even pointing out that the whole idea of “historical ties forged in struggle” is a lie will not convince the ANC to abandon the Russia led by Vladimir Putin today.
That is because the real season for the ANC’s support for Russia stems from a long-standing suspicion of the West that is so complex it is sometimes difficult to explain in words.
It is rooted in deep-seated anger at the colonial pillaging of Africa, Central Intelligence Agency interference in African affairs (the CIA informed on Nelson Mandela and got him arrested by the apartheid government while also having a hand in the murder of African freedom fighters such as Patrice Lumumba), and an obsession and deification of the USSR that is based on communist-era propaganda rather than reality.
This expresses itself in conspiracy theories within the ANC about how the West attempts to poison African leaders (remember how many times former president Jacob Zuma claimed to have received treatment for poisoning in Russia), for example, and other claims.
The other factor is money.
The ANC’s biggest cash cow is its investment arm, Chancellor House, which is in business with Putin ally Viktor Vekselberg.
The ANC’s partnership with Vekselberg in a Northern Cape manganese mine netted the ANC R528m in profits in 2020 alone, according to Africa Confidential.
With an election looming next year, the ANC needs cash desperately to continue its dominance.
These factors are reflected in the ANC’s extraordinary conference resolution which, despite all evidence to the contrary, asserted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “primarily a conflict between the US and US-led Nato and Russia”.
Without even stopping to consider that last year Russia was telling us it was going into Ukraine to “de-Nazify” that country and that its invasion was a “special operation”, the ANC continues: “This is why the US provoked the war with Russia over Ukraine, hoping to put Russia in its place.
“The peace and ‘free market economy’ dividends promised at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s have been shattered.
“The Western imperialist dominance over Eastern Europe is being advanced not through free trade and open competition for markets, but through US-led expansionist military strategies.”
If this reads like something from the Cold War rantings of the Soviet Communist Party, it is because the ANC is still stuck in the politics and grievances of that era.
The ANC still thinks that the wars of the 1970s, when it was banned and on the run from apartheid SA, are still on.
So, do not think that SA’s relations with the West are going to improve in any way soon.
The ANC loves going on American holidays, but it hates America.
It will not act in the interests of its people, but in its own interests and following its outdated thinking.
I expect a chilling — if not deterioration — of relations with the West.
DispatchLIVE
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.