Mthobeli Jiwulane

President Cyril Ramaphosa is known for procrastination on any decision-making which he defends as a strategy of applying his mind to an idea before he acts or gives the greenlight, but he is consistent with South Africa’s non-alignment to international relations.

As the policy of non-alignment is as old as the country’s 29-year old democracy and black majority rule, it came as no surprise that the ruling African National Congress of which Ramaphosa is the president, this week emphasised that non-alignment should continue to be the basis of the country’s foreign policy. President Ramaphosa, may be a neo-capitalist and therefore a proxy friend of the West with sympathy towards the US, but it is the old and struggle era ANC approach to international relations that guide Ramaphosa’s stance to international affairs. But he is powerless to act beyond the party’s collectivist approach to policy decisions which is influenced by its Communist and trade union left allies.

Following its elective 55th National Conference held last December, the ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula defends the government’s neutral stance on the current Russian-Ukrainian war saying South Africa has deliberately chosen no sides in the conflict.

“We are non-aligned although some people would like us to take sides. But we don’t take sides with Ukraine, we don’t take sides with Russia either. We work with everybody even those  who are anti-Russia or pro-Ukraine because we don’t believe that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine should be resolved by guns,” Mbalula says.

However, against this background, South Africa had not forgotten its historic ties with the former Soviet Union, which trained cadres of the ANC former military wing, Umkhonto Wesizwe (known in short as MK). Ironically many of the guerrillas were trained in then Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union.

Numerous  MK pioneers and senior members received their training and political education in the Soviet Union’s in places Moscow, then Bulgaria and Czechoslavakia including the current president of the ANC Veterans’ League Dr Snuki Zikalala and former ANC national executive committee member, the first Gauteng provincial premier and businessman, Tokyo Sexwale.

Also some party leaders like the revered Moses Kotane and JB Marks were buried in Russia before their remains were reburied back home post the 1994 majority rule. All these make the relationship between Russia and South Africa deeper than outsiders would imagine.

The ANC’s attachment to Russia is well understood by the USA but Washington still would like Pretoria to ditch Russia and align itself with the US. Some American politicians had pressured the Biden Administration to break links with South Africa, a decision that would not come easily from President Joe Biden who was among politicians who campaigned for the isolation of the white Apartheid government in South Africa during his time in the US Senate. But he could do nothing if Congress voted in favour the South African isolation and implementation of economic sanctions against it.

The ANC saw the current war between Russia and Ukraine as no longer a conflict between the two countries by a proxy war between the US and the US-led NATO against Russia in pursuit of the US objectives as contained in the Wolfowitz Doctrine. The Doctrine states that the US should not allow any country in the world post-Cold War period to challenge the US interests especially its hegemony.

According to the South African-based thinkers, Russia under President Vladimir Putin, is doing exactly with its invasion of Ukraine. The experts expressed fear that the perceived US and NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict could trigger the Third World War or the dreaded Nuclear War.

But even then, Mbalula states that the ANC’s stance remained non-aligned hence they maintain cordial relationship with both Washington and Moscow. The ANC wants South Africa to lead efforts to revitalise and reinforce the moribund Non-Aligned Movement in view of the worsening global peace and stability.

“The ANC calls on countries of the African Union as a whole to remain non-aligned and to actively participate in the Non-Aligned Movement,” the party says in its 2022 conference report released this week.

South African non-aligned foreign policy approach had been criticised internally within South Africa too. There is an existing dichotomy between the black and the white populations in the country where whites side with Ukraine and black with Russia. This is due to the fact that the majority of blacks were affected by Apartheid policies which some of the Western countries including the US supported and they understood the role played by the Soviet Union in supporting the liberation struggle in South Africa.

Whites, on the other hand have a historic ancestral relationship with the West and their opinion, along with that of the white dominated media in the country, had been pro-West.

Similarly, South Africa has official diplomatic relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority although it is opposed to the Israeli occupation of the Palestine territories. The country favoured a two-state system as a solution to the Middle East conflict while it favours the isolation of Tel Aviv until it freed Palestine.

Again, it sides  with the Western Sahara struggle against Morocco but maintains  diplomatic relations with both the Polisario Front and Rabat despite this. South Africa defends its ambiguous foreign policy in the Middle East and Morocco-Western Sahara conflict based on its stated non-alignment although it still pursues freedom for the Palestinians and Saharans.

Emerging from the ANC’s 55th national conference, which was held in Johannesburg in December, among its resolutions, as part of its goal to achieve “Progressive Internationalism in a changing world to attain a “Better Africa, and a Better World, the ANC says the party’s international relations work is anchored on the five pillars. 

Those were the building of a better African and a better world inclusive  of peace-building, post-conflict reconstruction and development, international solidarity, party to party and multilateral relations, transformation of global governance and continuous policy development.

It wants the strengthening of the Southern Africa Development Community and promotion of sufficient investment in the region and pursuance of the aims of the African Continental Free Trade Area on intra-Africa trade.

The ANC undertook to formulate a clear strategy and plan on international solidarity that includes revitalising the South-South solidarity, reviewing the North-South Co-operation and to “restructure them to resonate with our latest policies and vision of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), an ANC policy approach meant to achieve democratic change.

So any attempt to try to change South Africa from its non-alignment and pull it towards the Western influence, would be difficult especially it being under the influence of the Left which is happy to eat the crumbs from the ruling ANC’s neo-liberalism. Rather than trying to force it to choose the West, it’s better to let Pretoria continue to sit on the fence where in principle would struggle to fall on either side.