Non-aligned does not mean neutral in ANC speak

Ill-informed apartheid struggle-era loyalty is not the only factor which led the ANC government to allow a sanctions-busting Russian cargo ship to load weapons to help Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Follow the money.

In addition to long-standing allegations about the ANC’s entanglements with Putin over nuclear energy deals, the party is directly funded by one of the Russian president’s friends, Viktor Vekselberg. It’s on record.

The Independent Electoral Commission of SA’s quarterly report on donations to political parties shows United Manganese of Kalahari (UMK) made a R15 million contribution in November 2022, before the ANC’s national conference where Ramaphosa was re-elected.

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Oligarch Vekselberg is linked to UMK. US ambassador Reuben Brigety knew of this Russia/ANC connection and much else when he said the vessel Lady R uploaded its illicit cargo in Simon’s Town. Brigety’s certainty would not have been based on hearsay.

The US Central Intelligence Agency’s extensive network includes sophisticated satellite surveillance. Spies in the sky watch us. On 6 December, they would have had a clearer view than even the nosy neighbours around Simon’s Town Naval Base.

According to a Sunday newspaper, the cargo movements on the Lady R took place “at night under floodlights”. The Americans know what they saw and have been trying for months to make South African authorities aware of the implications.

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The US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act is up for review. South Africa does about R400 billion worth of trade with the US annually, compared to R15 billion with Russia.

Yet ideological blinkers, coupled with the financial backing the party receives from Russia, blind the ANC to the damage being done to SA’s economic prospects.

Former Eskom chief executive André de Ruyter mentions the ideological time warp in his book Truth to Power: “The ANC is a party stuck in the past. Guys, it’s the 21st century; why are you still addressing each other as comrade? Your ideology has been completely discredited. Yet you bow before the great gods of Marx and Lenin.”

South Africans who trained and studied in the former Soviet Union seem not to have grasped that much of the comradely hospitality was in fact in Ukraine, not Russia. Now it’s a separate country, but Ukraine was part of the Soviet struggle against apartheid. Russia today is not the Soviet Union.

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Events of the past week have shredded any pretence of South African neutrality in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

This bias was already clear from our voting pattern at the United Nations and joint naval exercises with Russia, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

This week we learn that Lieutenant-General Lawrence Mbatha, commander of SA ground forces, is in Moscow to discuss “issues relating to military cooperation” with Russian counterparts.

President Cyril Ramaphosa engages in time-warp wordplay by saying South Africa is “nonaligned”.

Dating from 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was “anti-colonial”, which meant anti-Western. After the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet bloc, the NAM focused on “Western hegemony and neocolonialism” (Wikipedia), ignoring the colonial practices of China and Russia.

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South Africa hosted the NAM summit in 1998. Thabo Mbeki chaired NAM 1999-2003. Non-aligned does not mean neutral in ANC speak. It invokes comradely nostalgia.