NICHOLAS WOODE-SMITH: Backing Russia and Hamas puts foreign policy on wrong track

The past weekend produced an unusual sight in the Mother City. At the V&A Waterfront, on Signal Hill and elsewhere around Cape Town, tourists and locals were surprised to spot a contingent of fresh-faced Russian navy sailors lapping up the city’s hospitality.

These young sailors are trainees aboard the Russian vessel Smolny, a training vessel docked at the Simon’s Town naval base, according to the Russian Consulate in Cape Town.

It is not unusual for foreign-armed forces to dock at Simon’s Town, and even engage to in training exercises with SA troops. But what should be unusual is that SA is allowing a ship to dock from a nation that is engaged in a morally heinous war of conquest.

Since 2022 Russia has been engaged in an invasion of Ukraine. This was a continuation of the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014, and just another chapter in the centuries-long attempt by Russia to eradicate the Ukrainian identity by any means necessary.

Just less than a century ago, from 1932 to 1933, Soviet Russia imposed a man-made famine on its colony of Ukraine. This event, now known as the Holodomor, resulted in the deaths of an estimated 3.5-million to 5-million Ukrainians.

The famine was caused by the incompetence of the communist system and an intentional, malicious attempt to persecute the Ukrainian people so that their land could be inhabited by Russians.

Alongside the famine, Ukraine’s culture, language and nationhood were eroded and criminalised by Soviet Russia in a continuation of Tsarist policies going as far back as Peter the First in the 18th century.

Colonial mission

In the current conflict Russia has committed gross war crimes against the Ukrainian people — intentionally targeting civilians as well as engaging in mass child abductions with the purpose of raising Ukrainian children as Russians. This is a tactic used by many genocidal colonial governments to wipe out the culture of native peoples.

Russia has had a centuries-long mission to oppress, eradicate and shackle the people of Ukraine, a colonial mission that pushes into genocide. Yet SA has engaged in repeated friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia.

The presence of the Smolny training vessel is just another example of SA kowtowing to a modern-day coloniser. While the accusations were swept under the carpet in local media, it is clear to the globe that SA smuggled ammunition to Russia using the Lady R docked in Simon’s Town. The government investigating itself and finding itself innocent is not a valid defence.

SA has also repeatedly sided with Russia, refusing to demand that Russia withdraw from Ukraine at a UN vote and repeatedly pretending to be neutral while allowing Russian forces to train in SA waters.

This year, two years into the war, a “historic” naval voyage was meant to take place in which the SA Navy would visit Russia and celebrate the ties between the two countries. It did not take place, but only because the SA vessels had not been properly maintained.

SA pays lip-service to neutrality while clearly, repeatedly siding with Moscow in its genocidal conquest of Ukraine. This is a fact that is clear to the world.

Misinformation campaigns

This hypocrisy is also evident in SA’s foreign policy towards Israel and Hamas. SA claims its overt hostility towards the Jewish state is due to it taking the moral high ground against “genocide” taking place in Gaza.

Yet, despite misinformation campaigns in the media, the case that SA put forward at the International Court of Justice did not find that a genocide was occurring in Gaza. Rather, it found that if a genocide was to occur, it should be stopped.

Despite propaganda pushed by ideologically corrupt pundits in the media and government, Israel has been fighting one of the most self-restrained wars in modern history. While Russia actively targets civilian areas with carpet bombing campaigns, and engages in systematic abductions of children, Israel has provided evacuation routes, allowed the issuance of aid, and done all it can to minimise civilian casualties.

This while Hamas has been proven to use its own people as human shields, as it has stated that it benefits from the death of civilians in its propaganda war.

Israel is fighting a just war of self-defence to prevent another October 7, an invasion of its territory with murderous intent. Russia is fighting to take territory from a sovereign country while engaging in intentional and reckless slaughter.

But we should not be surprised that SA’s still ANC-dominated government sides with Russia and Hamas. It sided with Mugabe, despite his genocide of the Ndebele. It refused to aid in the arrest of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, despite his genocide and war crimes in South Sudan. It sided with Saddam Hussein as he attempted to eradicate the Kurds.

SA’s foreign policy is fraught with deceit, hypocrisy and a romantic fascination with genocidal, imperialistic powers, while condemning countries that are trying to protect themselves from terror.

Something needs to change. As it stands, we aren’t risking being on the wrong side of history. We’re already there.

• Woode-Smith is a political analyst, historian and author. He has written extensively on SA foreign policy.