Vladimir Putin and his infernal legion of spooks and provocateurs seem to have done SA a favour. They have forced the adults in the Brics-obsessed ANC government to pay attention to the ailing state of SA’s relationship with the US. Yet another own goal for the Kremlin. So, at any rate, one hopes.
SA’s preferential access to the US market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) is not in immediate jeopardy, at least not on account of Russia. There are other, trade-related, reasons SA may have to worry about its Agoa status. But Putin has if anything strengthened the case for SA’s continued inclusion.
There are lots of busy little bees operating on the internet and from the Russian embassy in Pretoria looking to sabotage SA’s ties with the pro-Ukraine West. SA is an easy target for reasons going back to the struggle. You just have to read some of the ANC’s infantile foreign policy documents to know the movement is crawling with tankies (so called after the cadres who supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.)
Nor do you have to look very hard to find characters such as Phillip Dexter, chair of the Armscor board, spouting Russian propaganda without having to be prompted. I have no doubt he is perfectly sincere when he blames the war in Ukraine on American hegemony and the US military industrial complex. He doesn’t need to be nobbled by Moscow Centre hoods. He does their work for free.
Of course, it is no secret that swathes of people in and around the SA state, and at the highest level, are not exactly fastidious about their sources of income. That means they are both biddable and easy to blackmail — tailor made, in other words, for bending and twisting by the Russian gangster state.
Which brings us to the Lady R and its mysterious cargo.
“There was fokol on that ship,” Thandi Modise, the defence minister, famously said. I am tempted to believe her, at least insofar as she was referring to items of military value. I am equally tempted to believe that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of a panel to investigate the incident was done in good faith and that he had no idea of what was really going on.
What they really wanted was to make the West believe SA was sending them weapons, knowing that the Western and, in particular American, reaction would be vehement and divisive
You would have to be a fool not to know that at this point there are few sins more cardinal that a nation can commit in the eyes of the West than to supply Russia with munitions for use against Ukraine. Only the real pariahs — Iran, North Korea — do that. China hasn’t, as far as we know, but then China is on record at the UN as believing Russia is the aggressor.
Here is what I think may have happened. The Russians were not that interested in obtaining a few container loads of SA hardware. What they really wanted was to make the West believe SA was sending them weapons, knowing that the Western and, in particular American, reaction would be vehement and divisive. Which it was. US ambassador Reuben Brigety took the bait as did a lot of us because, as I said, the ANC is infested with tankies and they get under your skin and make you want to believe the worst.
There was nothing secret about the docking of the Lady R, only secretive. The big red ship was moored in plain sight at the Simon’s Town naval base. The containers were trucked down from Pretoria with a loud, visible escort. Whoever organised the parade wanted it to be seen — and to be suspicious. They were playing at being clandestine. The Lady R’s transponder was turned off to give things a Bond-movie feel and the loading carried out in darkness deepened by load-shedding but not so deep that there could be no witnesses.
If someone at Armscor or whoever it was wanted to ship weapons to Russia without anyone knowing, there are many ways they could have managed it. But was that the aim? What we had here, I am told, was another instance of Russian active measures conducted with inside help.
In the US we have become very familiar with these efforts to sow strategic discord. They helped give us Trump. Obviously, in SA, there are many willing helpers. Who, for example, thought it would be a good idea for the SA’s soi-disant navy to conduct a joint exercise with Russia on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
Actually cared
Yet, if Putin hoped to turn the US against SA, his effort would seem to be backfiring. Both sides are suddenly putting effort into a relationship that has been in need of work for some time. Witness last week’s visit by finance minister Enoch Godongwana and trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel.
Much more needs to be done. It has been nearly 10 years since SA last had an effective ambassador in Washington who could credibly help US decisionmakers tell the difference between what SA politicians say and what they mean — let alone one whose stature signalled that the SA government actually cared about America’s good opinion.
Regarding Agoa, frictions remain that could plausibly threaten SA’s eligibility down the line, but these have more to do with US access to SA’s market, or perceived lack thereof.
In its latest annual report on foreign trade barriers, the office of the US Trade Representative continued to complain that SA tariffs on a wide range of products discriminate against the US in favour of the EU. SA efforts to protect its poultry producers that nearly cost it Agoa benefits a few years ago, are still an irritant.
Nor should we forget that Agoa itself has to be renewed by 2025. There will certainly be discussion of whether SA, or certain SA product lines, should be graduated from the preferential programme — it is not a treaty, remember — as a matter of trade policy.
For now, though, the more it is understood that Putin has been trying to poison the well of US-SA relations, the stronger the case for Washington and Pretoria to engage constructively and for the US to set aside the Agoa stick. Putin will obviously keep trying. But how hard? To the point of inflicting himself in person on the Brics summit? It would seem not.
• Barber is a freelance journalist based in Washington
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