President Cyril Ramaphosa met with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Egypt on Monday. Together with Senegal’s Macky Sall, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Zambia’s Hakainde Hichilema and Comoros Islands’ Othman Ghazali, the AU president, they will form an Africa peace mission that will travel to Kyiv and Moscow to meet presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin in mid-June.
The war may be in Europe, but African countries have felt the blunt effects of rising grain and energy prices, so much so that it is causing societal instability. In the UN General Assembly resolution in March 2022 calling on Russia to halt its invasion and withdraw its forces from Ukraine, Egypt and Comoros voted in favour, while Senegal, Uganda, Zambia and SA abstained. The African peace delegation is therefore well constituted. All regions of Africa are represented, and it has enough balance for both Ukraine and Russia to feel they have friends in the delegation.
If there were still any doubts about which side SA is on, when challenged by the BBC’s Stephen Sackur on the Hardtalk programme in May, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said: “If it was according to the ANC, we would want president Putin to be here, even tomorrow, to come to our country, as part and parcel of Brics.” When I received media training many moons ago the trainers, all former journalists, told me to ignore loaded questions and press home my views. Sackur did his job. He got Mbalula to spit out what SA foreign policy analysts and Western diplomats have suspected for some time.
The ANC sees Russia as an ally against a common enemy, Western imperialism, led by the US. When push comes to shove the ANC stands by its ally. Mbalula went on to bring up the US-led invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan to make his point that the West practises double standards: when the US engages in wars of aggression it is right and just; when Russia does so it is a crime against humanity.
Ideologically, I am sympathetic to Mbalula’s view. The US approach of “you are either with us or against us” and its framing of the war in Europe as a “battle between democracy and autocracy” is plainly false. India, the largest democracy in the world, and most countries in the developing world, are democracies. Plainly, the Global South does not support the West. Most developing countries are not interested in the blame game and wish only for a ceasefire so the deaths will stop, followed by a peace settlement.
In terms of realpolitik I feel Mbalula and the ANC erred by putting the ANC’s ideological stance ahead of SA’s economic interests. I agree that the West has double standards, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t avoid incurring the wrath of the West. The rand has taken another beating, leading to inflation that directly hurts the masses.
As Ukraine begins its counteroffensive using weapons supplied by the West, and as Russia digs in for a long war, the African peace delegation will have little chance of coming away with a ceasefire agreement. A ceasefire and peace settlement can only come about when the belligerents feel no more advantage can be gained by fighting. As Ukraine has now received advanced weapons from the West, it will not give up on the fight now.
However, even if by some miracle Ukraine can push the Russian forces out of its territory, this does not mean Russia will give in. Putin clearly felt Nato expansion in the region posed an existential threat, and a successful counteroffensive by Ukraine will only be seen as evidence of this. Russia will mobilise more resources and continue fighting to the bitter end.
The war in Ukraine could well turn into another Iraq, another Afghanistan, another disaster for humanity.
• Dr Kuo is adjunct senior lecturer in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
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