In 2006, as it became increasingly clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Thabo Mbeki shook George W Bush’s hand in the Oval Office. The following year, as the international press began to accept that hell had been unleashed on Iraqi civilians based on a lie, Mbeki hosted Tony Blair in Pretoria.
It was appalling to watch Jacob Zuma roll out his gravy-smeared red carpet for genocidaire Omar al-Bashir, and Cyril Ramaphosa’s refusal to condemn Russia’s imperial war in Ukraine has been pitiful, but the fact remains that the ANC has a long tradition of maintaining cordial relations with states it believes are acting illegally or even barbarously, and not just those in the anti-Western bloc.
However, the devil is in the details. Mbeki may have posed with men his party now considers war criminals, but before either of those meetings took place both he and Nelson Mandela had delivered stinging rebukes to the US and UK for unilaterally trying to “force-feed” democracy to Iraq.
In theory, at least, you might have expected those speeches to be read again in 2022. After all, the invasions of Iraq and Ukraine are virtually identical, both featuring stuttering empires trumping up a motive to seize resources and territory of sovereign countries to buy themselves another decade or two.
And yet, apart from Naledi Pandor accidentally condemning the invasion before she was shown a five-year projection of her ministerial pension, there has been nothing even vaguely close to an Mbeki-esque warning about the consequences of allowing countries to level cities such as Bakhmut while simultaneously threatening nuclear obliteration if anyone throws a rock across the border the other way.
Of course, it’s naïve to expect the ANC to take the higher moral ground as it did in 2003. To take the higher moral ground you first need to find it, and we all know the ANC sold its moral compass decades ago for a line of coke snorted off the cold exhaust pipe of a grounded Gripen fighter.
It’s also naïve to believe this is about ideology. Rather, this is about that most ancient form of diplomacy, honed since the first courtier kissed the first hem, whereby you don’t tell your most lucrative source of income to go to hell until you’ve got an alternative income stream lined up. Well, unless you’re made of solid political gold, the way Mandela was when he told Western critics of SA’s relationship with Cuba, Iran or Libya that they could “go jump in the lake”.
Those fighting words came from a place of real conviction (let’s not forget that Mandela remained on US terror watch lists until 2008), but I very much doubt the ANC feels any loyalty towards Russia, beyond the inevitable emotional attachments that develop between blesser and blessee. Our governing party might not know how to generate electricity or teach children to read, but even people like Fikile Mbalula would have done the sums and realised Russia is finished as a long-term prospect.
Relentless demographic decline is about to go into freefall, and when Putin dies — possibly as early as August should he accidentally drink a glass of SA tap water at the Brics conference — it will take intervention well beyond the broken military of Russia to keep its 21 republics, home to 17% of its population, goose-stepping in unison.
China is a different proposition though, and a difficult one to ignore when it insists that it will pass the EU as Africa’s largest trading partner as early as 2030. I imagine it’s also quite hard to play it cool with the other Brics nations when you’re SA and you know you were only invited to join because they needed someone to stand outside in the street and keep their parking space open.
No, I can understand why the ANC is betting big and putting it all on red. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, or at least what the contract, made of fire and smelling of sulfur, tells you to do. But why does it all seem so chaotic this time? How could Mandela keep those sweet, sweet dollars pouring in even as he stood by regimes abhorrent to Washington? How did Mbeki help Robert Mugabe steal an election, loudly denounce Western aggression in Iraq, and still wine and dine with Western presidents?
Why can’t Ramaphosa do the same? I get that being part of Brics comes with certain duties, like sitting under Beijing’s table and performing your repertoire of tricks when Xi Jinping rings his little silver bell; but surely a resourceful lapdog would also nip next door from time to time for a face-full of Western cat food?
Even the Americans seemed keen to kiss and make up. So how is Ramaphosa getting this so wrong? Perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps the ANC is showing real loyalty to China, the sort it refuses to show to the people of this country. Perhaps it has finally taken a stand, and not just taken whatever isn’t bolted down.
But I can’t help looking at the quality of the people in Ramaphosa’s administration and wondering if it simply boils down to the same incompetence that has pumped death into our water. Playing both sides takes skill, and while Ramaphosa and his party tolerate many, many things, skill is not one of them.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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