Only a few days after South Africa disappointed human rights defenders by abstaining from a vote on a United Nations resolution condemning human rights abuses by the Myanmar military against the Muslim minority Rohinga people, it voted no to a budget meant to strengthen the fight against chemical weapons. While 99 of the countries attending the 23^rd Conference of States Parties of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague voted in favour of a budget that would give the body powers to point to those responsible for chemical weapons attacks rather than just documenting them, South Africa was among the 27 countries – alongside among others Russia, Syria, Iran and China – that voted against it last Tuesday.

The two-week summit, which comes to a close on Friday 30 November, was the first since the special session of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in June, when a decision was made to give the Technical Secretariat such powers of attributing blame. The budget, therefore, had to be expanded by 2.4%, a little beyond the zero nominal increase that is usual. This issue has, however, at best caused heated debate at the conference. At worst, the Russian side made indirect threats of withdrawing from the organisation in future by way of the head of the Russian delegation, deputy trade minister Georgy Kalamanov, mentioning that it was too early to talk about such. Russia, as well as China, rejected the Technical Secretariat’s additional powers, because they felt the United Nations Security Council should be the only body able to attribute responsibility for chemical weapons attacks.

The conference took place against the backdrop of repeated chemical attacks in Syria in the past five years, the poisoning of an ex-Russian double agent by the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, England (a British investigation implicated the Russian government, which has denied responsibility), and the poisoning in Malaysia of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half-brother in 2017.

London, for one, was keenly in favour of adopting the budget. Head of the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Arms Control and Disarmament Research Unit, John Walker, explained the UK’s support for expanding the OPCW’s powers to attribute blame as “a collective effort to protect a vital global norm”.

Attributing responsibility would help the fight against the spread of chemical weapons, and was “not about taking sides or reacting to any specific incident”. He said it was about “sustaining a rules-based international system”, and it was supported by most states.

British officials lobbied hard for South Africa’s support, partly because it is influential among the states of the south and could lobby them in turn, but also because South Africa has expertise in the field of chemical weapons stemming from its experience in its not-too-distant apartheid past. The former government’s Project Coast sought to fight political enemies through poisoning and also experimented with race-targeted chemicals, and it’s to be expected that this government would take a serious stand against such weapons.

In his statement to the conference, delivered on Friday, South Africa’s ambassador to The Hague, Bruce Koloane, expressed unhappiness about the way decisions about the budget were taken, “through a vote and not by consensus”. He said this has become a “new culture” that defined the organisation, rather than the “consensus culture which earned this organisation the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013”. He said the decision in June to set up the attribution mechanism “has clearly had a divisive effect amongst State Parties to the CWC”. He said the members now “have to ensure that its implementation does not further exacerbate an already extremely polarised environment” and that it was not politicised. (In case you have forgotten how he got there, Koloane was promoted to The Hague after being the scapegoat for the illegal landing of the Gupta plane at Waterkloof Airforce Base in 2013, which he organised through name-dropping former president Jacob Zuma.)

International Relations spokesperson Ndivhuwo Mabaya expressed no wavering about South Africa’s voting position. He said in the process leading up to the OPCW conference South Africa “repeatedly recommended that key issues, ie utilisation of the budget surplus and the increase in assessed contributions, be discussed first as they affect contributions by different states, in particular the contribution by South Africa”.

He also said the “historic unwritten rule for decision by consensus must be respected”. Even though the budget was approved, South Africa would “continue to lobby for decisions to be taken by consensus and for more discussions and agreements, not just putting issues to votes”.

He added that South Africa remained committed to the Chemical Weapons Convention and still regarded the OPCW as an effective instrument for the elimination of chemical weapons.

South Africa’s vote has disappointed British officials, who had hoped that International Relations and Co-operation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s appointment nine months ago would have brought about a foreign policy approach that would be slightly more favourable to their positions.

“We had mixed messages from [the Department of International Relations and Co-operation] on how it would vote,” an official said.

Two days after the vote, last Thursday, Sisulu said in a statement in reaction to an outcry over the Myanmar vote that she was “considering guidelines that will inform South Africa’s voting in various multilateral fora” in preparation for South Africa assuming its non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security council in January for the next two years. These guidelines, she said, would also apply in the OPCW and the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Diplomats said as a member of the UN Security Council, many countries would lobby for South Africa’s support on various issues of international concern, and they were hoping for some consistency and an understanding of human rights issues from South Africa’s side. Sisulu has since promised that South Africa would change from abstaining to voting in favour of the resolution on human rights violations in Myanmar during the UN General Assembly plenary in December. The test would be to see whether officials there actually go through with this. DM