In terms of being definable as “crimes against humanity”, apartheid, the Holocaust and Russia’s war against Ukraine are probably bedfellows.

Concerning the first two, the international community responded in unison with abhorrence, condemnation, and punishment, while in the case of the Ukrainian war, in spite of all the condemning evidence (authoritatively confirmed by US Vice-President Kamala Harris) world opinion still falls short of being unanimous with some states, mostly in the Global South, keeping their powder dry.

In the UN General Assembly vote, despite the much-vaunted “African Unity”, African states showed deep division: 32 condemning Russia, 18 abstentions and five voting against.

South Africa counted among the abstentions, causing great national as well as international concern and disappointment. Being a long-suffering victim of a crime against humanity, and liberated by a united international community, it was expected to take up position as a galleon figurehead of moral righteousness. 

Instead, it chose to act as a poster child for Kremlin lies and propaganda, causing severe disappointment and indignation for flouting the hard-won moral principles and ideals supposed to underpin its foreign policy, international respect, and reliability. 

Stern warnings, seemingly to no avail, abound that South Africa would yet pay the price for its duplicity. Obviously, a country which is itself well-nigh bankrupt and ungovernable, sliding towards failed state status, could hardly afford the reprisals which may yet follow.

For now, it seems to believe it can get away with impunity, which will no doubt prove to be a serious miscalculation given that this stance is intolerable for all civilised democratic nations. Neutrality on a crime against humanity, as in the case of racism, is a deed of complicity, a crime in itself.

Predictably, Kremlin propaganda will respond with its usual strong denials. It consistently regards attacks on human rights abuses as part of a Western conspiracy, blandly denying being guilty of starting this brutal war. 

Pretoria probably reckons that it can get away with its stance as it persists with its anti-Western ideology, assuming that the West is in inevitable decline, ineluctably making way for a Russian and Chinese-dominated new world order. Indeed, the war in Ukraine has become a testing ground for this vision. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was widely proclaimed that the Cold War had ended. However, the war in Ukraine has revived and perpetuated much of its ill-gotten by-products as democratic and authoritarian world powers alike compete relentlessly for African alliances, making way for horse trading and a new African stampede. 

South Africa has become a prime target in this stampede, as demonstrated by recent high-level visits to South Africa by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, followed up by visits by the EU Commissioner Josep Borrell and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

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So, it’s back to Cold War stuff, buying off potential backers for ideological and diplomatic support. Lavrov received ostentatious red-carpet treatment during his recent visit to South Africa, Russia provocatively participated in joint wargame naval exercises off our coast testing weapons of mass destruction, and Russian ships docked in our harbours under mysterious circumstances, bringing into question South Africa’s so-called “neutrality” and its stance towards the international sanctions regime against Russia.

At the same time, it laid bare Western, particularly American, incompetence in dealing with South Africa’s diplomatic duplicity. Its limp-wristed mollycoddling reaction did not move South Africa one inch. By all indications, what happened was a propaganda victory for the Kremlin, adding further grist to Putin’s mill. 

In September last year, during a meeting in the White House between presidents Joe Biden and Cyril Ramaphosa, the former suggested that South Africa use its “strong moral force” to help end Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Biden should have realised that he was flogging a dead horse: South Africa’s vaunted international moral force departed with Nelson Mandela. Since then it has cosied up to dictatorships of the ilk of Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Cuba, Venezuela, and most noticeably China and Russia.

Also, to assume that a severely politically hamstrung Ramaphosa could influence a serial lying, psychopathic war criminal like Vladimir Putin is simply not realpolitik. Even the much more legitimate French president Emmanuel Macron gave up on this one.

The White House meeting was, therefore, more a demonstration of sterile soft-sell protocol niceties than one of serious diplomatic bargaining. Dismissing American efforts, South Africa was unperturbed in going ahead and crossing the red lines set by the sanctions regime, allowing the joint naval exercise off its coast and giving red-carpet treatment to Lavrov.

Apparently, the US and its main Western allies are careful not to alienate South Africa by pushing harder for favourable reciprocity of some kind. 

Indeed, South Africa must be free to have relations with anyone it chooses. But in a world of interdependence, actions have consequences. Affording succour to a criminal Kremlin government is indeed a crime in itself, crossing a red line which the world’s civilised nations should oppose in every way. 

A country like South Africa reneging on its once highly lauded democratic and moral liberation founding principles choosing to turn a blind eye to Russia’s flouting of international law and basic human rights is downright degrading and shameful. The murderous and destructive Russian war against a sovereign Ukraine is a crime against humanity, as apartheid was.

Yet, and shamefully so, the South African government treats Russia as a victim of Western demonisation.

It is obvious that South Africa runs a neither fish nor fowl foreign policy without cutting-edge, intellectual rationale, or independence. Under these circumstances, opting for authentic neutrality (or non-alignment) would seem to be a wise choice rather than persisting with the present opportunistic smoke screen. It could learn much from particularly Swiss and Nordic neutrality and Japanese and Indian foreign policies in dealing with the complexities of its own and Africa’s foreign policies. 

South Africa’s democratic transformation in 1994 became a global beacon of hope. Pitifully, however, after president Nelson Mandela left the scene, the “rainbow nation” degenerated into becoming just another African state. Can our nation face the consequences? DM