The South African military will hold a joint military exercise with Russia and China on its east coast from February 17-27. The naval drills coincide with the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
While South Africa has little trade with Moscow, it supports the position that Russia and China have taken to limit perceived US hegemony on the global stage.
South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), has also felt indebted to the Kremlin over the past three decades out of gratitude for the moral and military support in South Africa’s fight against apartheid.
At the same time, South Africa’s avowed neutrality has disappointed its Western partners, who view the country as vital to their plans to strengthen ties with Africa. On Monday, South Africa’s Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, responded to criticism of the planned joint military drills, saying hosting such drills with “friends” is the “natural course of relations”.
South Africa’s “foreign policy must support human rights”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has agreed to mediate in the Ukraine conflict, insists on his government’s impartiality. The political opposition and many representatives of civil society see things differently.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that the South African government is openly siding with Russia,” said Darren Bergman, a member of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party.
“South Africa’s position is a bad situation where you’re totally on the fence,” William Gumede, chief executive officer of the Johannesburg-based Democracy Works Foundation, told DW. “This is a truly unconstitutional position because our Constitution is very clear that our foreign policy must support human rights,” said the researcher and lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Some South Africans have protested against their government’s stance on the Ukraine war. Image: Alet Pretorius/Portal
This is Lavrov’s second visit to Africa in six months. It comes ahead of the Russia-Africa summit, which was postponed to July 2023 last year because of the war against Ukraine.
A South African official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak, said Lavrov will also visit Eswatini, Botswana and Angola on his trip.
Ukraine’s request for assistance in Africa
The Ukrainian embassy in Pretoria has asked the South African government to support the 10-point peace plan that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed to the G20 last November.
Zelenskyi has repeatedly tried to strengthen Ukraine’s ties with Africa, but so far with little success. Most African nations have been reluctant to take sides, as illustrated in the UN General Assembly vote to suspend Russia’s membership of the Human Rights Council last April, when just 10 out of 54 African nations voted in favour. Nine opposed the resolution and 35 abstained or were absent.
A month earlier, just 28 African countries had backed a UN resolution calling for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
Russia is currently the largest arms exporter on the African continent. According to the annual review by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, arms exports to Africa accounted for 18% of all Russian arms exports between 2016 and 2020.
In January 2022, hundreds of Russian military advisers were deployed to Mali. According to the Malian army, contractors from the controversial Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group have been invited to “help Mali train its security forces.”
Mali’s southern neighbor Burkina Faso witnessed a coup last January, followed by a second in September. Like its counterparts in Mali, the Burkinabe military has resisted calls for power to be handed over to a civilian government. She, too, has taken her cue from Moscow.
The last joint military exercise with Russia and China took place in Cape Town in 2019Image: Chen Cheng/Photoshot/Picture Alliance
Russia wants to act as the “defender of Africa”.
Sudan, Chad, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau have also seen coups in recent years. Most of the soldiers behind each of these coups had received military training sponsored by Russia.
According to Irina Filatova of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, Russia wants to gain a foothold on the continent as a security broker to “oppose the collective West” and project the image of “Africa’s defender.”
After the end of World War II and well into the 1970s, the Kremlin supported liberation movements across the continent. At that time, Russia mainly exported weapons and ammunition for light to medium ranges.
Many welcomed Moscow’s growing influence on the continent. “Without the Soviet Union’s firm stance during the Cold War and the heyday of the anti-colonial struggle, many of our countries would never have seen the light of day,” Obadiah Mailafia, a former deputy governor of Nigeria’s central bank, told DW in 2019.
That support waned after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. But over the past two decades, Russian leaders have tried to revive these independence-era ties.
President Vladimir Putin (left) and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa met at the first-ever Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi in 2019Image: SERGEI CHIRIKOV/AFP
Russia has officially remained silent on its policy towards Africa. But from Filatova’s point of view, Moscow relies on private military companies such as the Wagner Group as “door openers”.
“Officially, [the military groups] are not included in the strategy at all. But what we see is that when there is some instability, they always come first, and then they help secure those in power who have built ties with Russia,” she told DW.
African countries sought Russia’s help
The first arms deal to be made public was the sale of a Russian-made attack ship to an unnamed country in sub-Saharan Africa. Supplier Rosoboronexport – Russia’s only state-owned arms supplier – confirmed the deal in April 2020.
A few months earlier, in 2019, the first-ever Russia-Africa Business Forum was held in Sochi, attended by many big names from African politics. Russia took the opportunity to tout its track record in Africa. By then it had made a name for itself as an ally of several nations fighting ongoing uprisings.
In 2018, Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania asked Moscow for help in fighting the so-called “Islamic State” and al-Qaeda.
In addition to military services, Moscow has also created a niche for selling nuclear technology to developing countries. Zambia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Egypt and Nigeria are among the markets for Russian-built nuclear power plants.
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Edited by: Benita van Eyssen