CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) – The South African government came under increased pressure on Wednesday for refusing to release cargo documents related to a visit to a Russian ship where the United States had allegedly collected a shipment of arms bound for Moscow.
Separately, a senior official in South Africa’s ruling party stepped up scrutiny of the country’s ties with Russia by saying the party would “welcome” a visit from President Vladimir Putin, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.
African National Congress Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula’s comments on Putin were made in an interview with the BBC and in the context of the Russian leader’s attendance at a BRICS economic bloc summit in South Africa in August. The bloc consists of Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa.
“If the ANC had its way, we would want President Putin to be here tomorrow to come to our country,” Mbalula said in the interview, excerpts of which were published on The ANC’s social media channels on Tuesday. “We will warmly welcome him to come here as part of the BRICS.”
As a signatory to the International Criminal Court agreement, South Africa is obliged to arrest Putin if he enters the country. The South African government has indicated that it will not execute the arrest warrant if Putin does travel to the summit, although it has not specifically said so.
“Do you think a head of state can just be arrested anywhere?” Mbalula, a former cabinet minister who is now the ANC’s chief administrator, said in the BBC interview.
He told the BBC interviewer that there was hypocrisy on the part of the West in relation to the arrest warrant for Putin because he believed Britain and other Western nations had committed crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and no heads of state had been arrested.
Mbalula last month called the United States one of the countries “that are messing up the world.”
The story goes on
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric has increased in the ANC and in parts of the South African government, although South Africa maintains a neutral stance on the war.
The trend is worrying for the US and other western partners of South Africa given the country is an influential democracy in the developing world and Africa’s most advanced economy.
South Africa has a historic relationship with Russia, linked to the old Soviet Union’s military and political support for the ANC when it was a liberation movement fighting to end the racist apartheid regime that oppressed the country’s black majority. The West seems concerned that the ANC’s old ideological ties to Russia are now dragging South Africa into Moscow’s political sphere amid rising global tensions. There are also growing economic ties between Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people, and China.
The concerns were laid bare by the US ambassador to South Africa earlier this month, when he accused South Africa of supplying arms to Russia via a cargo ship that docked at a naval base near the city of Cape Town in December. Ambassador Reuben Brigety said “I’d bet my life” that arms were loaded onto the Russian-flagged Lady R, which is under US sanctions for alleged links to a company that transported arms for the Russian government.
The South African government has denied having made any arms deals with Russia, although it does not categorically rule out the possibility that another company did so in secret. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered an investigation.
On Wednesday, South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, called on the government to come forward if it had nothing to hide and issue a cargo manifest for Lady R’s visit to Simon’s Town naval base.
A DA lawmaker also urged Defense Minister Thandi Modise to release the documents during a debate in parliament on Tuesday. Modise refused to do so, while repeating the government’s denial that weapons had been loaded on the ship, with a swear word.
Modise said the Russian ship was visiting to deliver a shipment of ammunition to South Africa that had been ordered in 2018 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Modise’s refusal to release the cargo manifest was backed by other ANC lawmakers, who said the documents were “classified”. Modise said they would be turned over to the investigation into the incident.
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