OOfficially, South Africa is still planning to host the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in August, to which it has invited Vladimir Putin, despite the Criminal Court’s arrest warrant (ICC) for war crimes against him. For how long ? While the South African government indicates “consider all options”including that of relocating the event to extricate itself from this quagmire, the dilemma illustrates the untenable position of the country in terms of foreign policy, in the context of the war in Ukraine.
“If it only depended on the the National African Congress [ANC], we would like President Putin to be here tomorrow. » At the end of May, Fikile Mbalula, the secretary general of the ANC, the party in power since the fall of apartheid, made no secret of his desire to welcome the Russian president. However, the country is a signatory to the Rome Statute, which obliges it to respect the decisions of the ICC.
“Non-aligned”, the South African government has always refused to qualify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as aggression, abstaining from voting in United Nations resolutions to this effect. “South Africa has not been and will not be drawn into a competition between world powers”repeated President Cyril Ramaphosa on May 24, calling for a “peaceful resolution” of the conflict.
The actions of the South African government since the start of the war tell a different story. Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor displays unreserved closeness to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who was warmly welcomed in Pretoria in January. The same never misses an opportunity to criticize the United States and its European allies, accused of pressing their African partners to choose a side.
Joint military exercises
Tension between South Africa and its Western partners escalated in February when the country hosted military exercises with Russia on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Two months earlier, the ANC, whose positions define government policy, adopted a resolution ensuring that “the United States provoked war with Russia in Ukraine, in the hope of putting Russia in its place”. A vision consistent with that of Moscow.
The links forged at the time when the Soviet Union carried the struggle of the South African Liberation Party against apartheid at arm’s length are often invoked to explain the closeness of the South African regime to Moscow. More recently, the bankrupt ANC ended 2022 with a donation of nearly $800,000 (more than 740,000 euros) from a company linked to a US-sanctioned Russian oligarch.
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