The Ukrainian ambassador to SA Liubov Abravitova, deserves our respect. She has worked tirelessly to publicise the plight of her countrymen and woman, fighting as hard as her comrades on the front lines. While her comrades fight invaders, she has been fighting a faceless SA bureaucracy that values protocol above human lives. She is perfectly entitled to give President Cyril Ramaphosa the cold shoulder and keep him waiting some more to have that call with her boss, President Volodymyr Zelensky.
After all, Ramaphosa waited a week after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin to even request a conversation with Zelensky. When Abravitova asked for emergency meetings with Ramaphosa and international relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor given the calamity that had befallen her country and SA influence as a Brics country, she was told protocol did not allow her, a mere ambassador, to meet his holiness Ramaphosa and her highness Pandor. All sarcasm observed.
— avoiding making accusations allows SA to maintain its influence over Russia
I have argued in the past that SA’s neutral stance in the UN with regard to the war in Europe is strategically correct because avoiding making accusations allows SA to maintain its influence over Russia. When push comes to shove Brazil, India, China and SA will need to lean on Russia to accept a truce, a multinational peacekeeping mission and a negotiated peace settlement.
This happened in Sudan, when the AU and China persuaded then president Omar al-Bashir to accept a UN-AU hybrid peacekeeping force to enter and stabilise the war-torn Darfur region in 2007.
The G20 finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington this week, and there is a G20 leaders’ summit due to take place in October in Indonesia. The G20, whose members account for 80% of the global economy, is split down the middle on sanctions against Russia. Excluding the EU and Russia, of the 18 remaining countries nine are participating in sanctions. The other nine, including China, Brazil, Turkey and SA, have avoided sanctions.
As the host of the October summit Indonesia is now under the spotlight. Mirelle Marcia Kaman of Indonesia’s Universitas Katolik Parahyangan has argued that the G20 summit can be a good forum for peace negotiations, and Indonesia is well placed to be an honest broker given its previous experience facilitating peace talks between Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as the government and separatist groups in the Philippines.
Wars end in two ways. One side wins and dictate terms, or the two sides sit down and negotiate a peace settlement. It appears that there will be no quick victory for either side in Ukraine, and the best solution is therefore negotiations to end the fighting. Zelensky has on more than one occasion declared a willingness to negotiate. He has been open to the idea that, like Finland, Ukraine can remain a neutral buffer country between Russia and Nato. As far as territory is concerned, proper referendums can be held in the contested eastern Ukraine areas of Donetsk and Luhansk to establish what the local people want.
The fact of the matter is, only China and the US possesses the clout to push Russia and Ukraine to the negotiation table and neither one is pushing for negotiations now. China is taking a wait-and-see approach, while the US is adding fuel to the fire by supplying ever more advanced weapons as Russia prepares for a new offensive on eastern Ukraine.
The SA government’s lack of leadership as a premium country of the South and a Brics member has been more than disappointing. We have slighted the Ukrainian ambassador to SA and given Russia the impression that we support its invasion, as if the Brics project to create a more equitable global system can be achieved with tanks and bombs.
Ramaphosa ought to seriously consider getting behind Indonesia to push for Ukraine to be invited to the G20 summit, and use whatever political capital he has with Putin to urge a negotiated settlement.
• Dr Kuo, a former lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University in China, is adjunct senior lecturer in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
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