Mthobeli Jiwulane
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa made a long-distance phone call to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping at the weekend, to request him to host the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Summit on his behalf in August.
It was not part of a regular call by Pretoria to Beijing, but was an attempt by Ramaphosa to get the country out of a diplomatic crisis it is in where it was involved in a messy tug-of-war between the US and Russia.
The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that South Africa would be forced to arrest the Russian leader as soon as he landed on its soil to attend the highly anticipated BRICS gathering scheduled to be held in Johannesburg in August.
Pretoria is avoiding to arrest Putin who was indicted by The Haig-based International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute and therefore is obliged to implement the difficult request by the ICC. It is reluctant to do it being a historic friend of Russia from the Soviet Union era.
According to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation’s HardTalk host, Stephen Sackur, as the party they wouldn’t like to arrest Putin as he was a head of state who should be accorded respect like all leaders.
Mbalula also raised the hypocrisy of the ICC and the West in targeting Putin while the court kept a blind eye to atrocities committed by Western leaders in previous wars they were involved in.
The head of the ANC accused the West for having committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan with impunity while the ICC folded its arms to their crimes. The West, particularly the United States assisted by some European countries like Britain attacked Iraq in the 1990s in the name of seeking weapons of mass destruction that were never found. Both former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair confessed recently that the US-led invasion in Iraq was wrong and it was due to wrong intelligence report they received that Baghdad kept WMD.
Since attaining its freedom from the white apartheid rule via multi-party constitutional negotiations, South Africa had adopted non-aligned foreign policy including on international conflicts. But some like the US appear to doubt its neutrality because of its refusal to publicly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ramaphosa would like China to host the BRICS summit which would still be chaired by South Africa as incoming chair of the bloc of developing nations. The idea to ask China to help with hosting it was to avoid having to arrest Putin. Besides Putin indicated to South Africa that he wouldn’t like to be isolate from attending the crucial meeting in South Africa and not attending physically would make him appear as a weak leader. But Putin appeared to be amenable to the suggestion that the summit should be shifted to China, Russia’s ally, to enable him to attend.
It’s a difficult task for Ramaphosa who needs the West particularly the United States in the same way he needs Russia and China as international partners.
Besides, President Biden supported the isolation of the apartheid white South African regime as then US senator and therefore seen as a friend by some in South Africa. He has received several South African missions comprising senior Pretoria officials and had a regular dialogue with Ramaphosa on a wide range of issues.
The US is a significant trade partner of South African but its trade pales into insignificance compared to that of China, which is a single largest trading partner with Pretoria. China is followed by the European Union with the US in the third spot.
The ICC-Russian saga coincided with accusation by the United States ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety who claimed that the country suppled arms to Russia in its ongoing war with Ukraine. The envoy’s claim raised speculation about possible imposition of sanctions by the United States and subsequently by the EU against South Africa as punishment for its alleged support for Moscow.
But political analysts in South Africa such as John Stremlau believe that the Biden Administration is not keen to get involved in a mud-slinging match or to punish South Africa. Rather Washington would prefer to swallow the unsettling question of South African being a “non-aligned friend” than lose it to Russia completely.
Historically South Africa’s geographic location as a half-way-house in international trade between the West and the East and being a getaway to Africa politically and economically was important for the US and Europe that would like to out-smart Russia and China in Africa.
In the last year, the US had been pushing to entrench itself in Africa in the light of fierce competition from both China and Russia that are gaining momentum on the continent. Besides, BRICS is leading the charge for the de-dollarization of international trade, something that was unsettling to the Americans.