ANC finds its inner white supremacist in Putin worship
It makes sense” that the ANC has sent a delegation to Russia, and not only because calling it a “working visit means they can charge the minibar to SA taxpayers. The Brics gathering is just around the corner and the ANC urgently needs to know whether Vladimir Putin will be attending. And, if he is, whether there’s some kind of processing fee for leaving the International Criminal Court. And if there is, whether he might be able to loan it to them, just until payday.
Secondly, the ANC can spare the manpower right now, what with the huge boost its election campaign got from John Steenhuisen’s speechwriters at the weekend.
Of course, I’m not trained in rhetoric but I can’t help feeling that if I’d wanted to ease away lingering concerns about black leaders being ditched by the DA, or whether it was ready to be the political home of the black majority, I don’t know that I would have rounded off an excited vision of moving from opposition into government by having Steenhuisen declare: “Our country has not experienced this since the National Party won its first election all the way back in 1948!”
Yes, the timing of the ANC’s trip to Russia makes a lot of sense. But what’s less clear is why the ANC remains so devoted to Putin. Its halfcentury-old debt of gratitude to the former Soviet Union is well and good, but it doesn’t explain how the modern ANC has stayed so loyal to a radically different Russia that it now finds itself in the same camp as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the Russian Orthodox bishop, billionaire and big fan of holy war.
It goes without saying that Putin ’ s favourite cleric doesn’t believe Ukraine is a separate country but instead part of a “Holy Rus” empire that must be restored. You will also not be surprised to learn that he believes Putin’s leadership is a “miracle of God”, that activist rockers Pussy Riot were “doing the work of Satan”, and that Ukraine needed to be invaded to stop the scourge of gay pride marches.
Patriarch Kirill is not only popular in the Kremlin: he has been winning hearts and what passes for minds abroad too. NPR recently reported on how Kirill’s old-timey brand of Russian Orthodoxy is offering a welcome alternative to some US white nationalists who can’t seem to find enough hate in their local faiths.
A certain Lauren Witzke, for example, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware in 2020, who believes Covid-19 vaccines are a “satanic plot to cause mass death”, praised the “patriotic masculinity” of the neofascist Proud Boys militia, called trans people “demonic” and “paedophiles”, and is open to the Earth being flat, said: “I identify more with Russian — with Putin’s Christian values than I do with Joe Biden.”
In short, the ANC now finds itself in the company of people who worship at the altar of white nationalist, antidemocratic, Christian fundamentalism. It might not be taking communion with them, but the party of Nelson Mandela is unquestionably kneeling beside the inheritors of the worldview that led to the massacre at Sharpeville and the assassination of Chris Hani.
How has this happened? Is it as simple as the few million bucks being slipped to Luthuli House by people like Viktor Vekselberg? Certainly, it can’t be ideology: in the 1960s, Moscow and the ANC shared a vision of an egalitarian, socialist utopia, whereas today Moscow is trying to emulate the laundered and legitimised oligarchies of New York and Dubai while the ANC is just trying to remember if it had left the oven on.
But perhaps there is one, genuine bond they share: the deep-rooted belief that they are the last, best buffer against chaos. For Putin, that was always explicit. After the shock of the collapse of the USSR, and the frenzy of looting by political gangsters that followed it, Putin understood that traumatised Russians didn’t want new ideologies. Instead, he gave them one, very old one: deeply reassuring conservatism, promising as it always does to resist societal collapse by rejecting the subversives and provocateurs who try to undermine tradition with their newfangled notions and dangerous liberalism.
This is why Putin’s boosters speak about liberal ideology in the same breath as Western military encirclement: in the worldview of Patriarch Kirill, a woman marrying a woman is almost as destructive to Holy Rus as an American nuclear missile.
For the ANC, likewise, chaos was a terribly real enemy in the early 1990s, as heavily armed Zulu and white nationalists threatened to push back against a loose federation of semi-socialist nation builders and budding tenderpreneurs red in tooth and claw. Many of the compromises made by Mandela’s ANC look ropy today, but that’s perhaps what happens when decisions are based not on securing the best future but averting the worst.
The tragedy, of course, is that after a decade of progress, two of neglect and misrule have brought us right back to the brink of chaos again. Liberals will continue to denounce Putin, but a large and growing number of South Africans are primed to demand what he delivered in Russia.
Are we likely to experience, in the excited words of John Steenhuisen, something we haven’t experienced since 1948? Probably not. But we are a conservative society, and we are about to discover just how deep our conservatism runs.
PERHAPS THERE IS ONE, GENUINE BOND THEY SHARE: THE DEEPROOTED BELIEF THAT THEY ARE THE LAST, BEST BUFFER AGAINST CHAOS
THE ANC ’ S TRIP TO RUSSIA MAKES A LOT OF SENSE FOR IT, BUT IT IS LESS CLEAR WHY IT REMAINS SO DEVOTED TO VLADIMIR PUTIN