The West will not forget our stance on Ukraine
It is going to take Europe and the West a long time to forget that SA failed to condemn Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine when it was given the opportunity to do so in the UN General Assembly this week. Of course, to those South Africans supporting the Russians, or clamouring to point out the cruel involvement or neglect by the West in conflicts from Palestine to Ethiopia, our abstention from a resolution condemning the Russian invasion is perfectly reasonable. There are always two sides to the story, we are told, though you have to ask what the reasonable part of apartheid was.
Ukraine exposes our enduring political divide. So often we cannot separate right from wrong. International relations & co-operation spokesperson Clayson Monyela was trying to taunt the EU ambassador to SA on Thursday after she tweeted her disbelief at the SA vote. “Do you wanna engage here Amb?” flashed back our swashbuckling diplomat. “I assume you saw the Vote Explanation. Thoughts? #whataboutism. Let’s not forget the People of Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia etc. The EU shud ‘condemn’ aggressors in these cases as well. Consistency in our Diplomatic endeavours is critical.”
I asked him on Twitter why, if consistency was so important, did we withdraw our ambassador to Israel after one particularly savage attack on Palestinians but not our ambassador in Moscow now. He never replied. Instead, as the Russians were committing war crimes with illegal artillery in Ukraine, ANC leaders were, literally, sipping cocktails with Russian diplomats to mark 30 years of Russian diplomatic ties with SA. It was nauseating.
But at some stage President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has driven our decision to morally ignore the invasion and to treat the Ukrainians as equal combatants, will have to confront the reality of what he has done. He will, in short, have to change his mind.
His acquiescence in the Russian invasion may well have assuaged the Gucci lefties around him. Some, like social development minister Lindiwe Zulu, studied in Moscow, but the writer Zakes Mda reminds us that many ANC comrades lived in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, including doctors who later worked in ANC camps back in Africa. Exile in Eastern Europe was a sad affair, often endured through a fog of alcohol while the leadership enjoyed the decadent privileges of London.
And the Russia the old exiles knew is now a giant materialistic kleptocracy where the people who were sold state assets for next to nothing turned them on for vast fortunes. These oligarchs now pay homage to the man who secured their wealth (in return for a cut), President Vladimir Putin.
As he holds a knife to the oligarchal throat, Putin also seems to have sway over Ramaphosa. It may be fear. It can’t possibly be money or principle. And the fact is Putin is an extremely dangerous man. His military a few days ago fired shells at Europe’s biggest nuclear power station, and Ukraine is littered with the bodies of women and children his invading army has killed.
That Putin’s army is poorly trained and badly led is not much comfort, because he makes up for its inadequacies with missiles. That will only increase, and the damage and the human toll will become exceptionally bad.
Russia is a minor economic partner to SA. The Europeans and Americans are huge and our UN explanation is not worth the paper it is written on. The problem is that no-one is reading the room and investments not happening make no sound. No-one in the government appears to appreciate just how severe Western sanctions on Russia may become. They will quickly and directly threaten our economy. We can already feel the inflation.
Ramaphosa must know he cannot remain neutral for long in the face of such blatant Russian violence. It is no good waiting for a lead from China. Beijing is also confused. It is deeply invested in Europe and the US. Much less so in Russia.
Does Ramaphosa have a Plan B? You have to hope so, because Putin is only just starting. He could use “tactical” nuclear weapons in battle, especially if he is losing. He could have Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky dragged onto a public square and executed. He could invade a Nato ally.
There is no point waiting to be asked to mediate, if that is our leader’s idea. This has gone too far already and the legacy that awaits his feckless neutrality is not going to be pretty.
To paraphrase The Financial Times’s Martin Wolf, we may not know how this war will end but we sure as hell know how it began.
Ramaphosa must know he cannot remain neutral for long in the face of such blatant violence