LETTER: SA deserves to be disrespected

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attempt to walk back international relations minister Naledi Pandor’s apposite characterisation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an act of aggression was headless chicken stuff. Officials are running around, confused about what the correct spin on the issue was, where there was no right or wrong, where no signal may ever displease the master puppeteer.

Poor Pandor is now to be hauled in front of some party committee for daring to say the obvious; to speak truth to power.

Ramaphosa is the ultimate equivocator. Nobody’s ever in the wrong, compromises are always held out as the purported ideal outcome. No call is ever made to come down on the side of the truth, because it is forever contested and relative, never absolute — the universe of moral relativism. The complete lack of moral clarity, the utter inability to recognise a clear instance of a male fide agent intent on subverting all accepted norms in pursuit of expanding a criminal enterprise headed by the Kremlin, is reflective of the ANC as an organisation that has completely lost any claim to principle.

It is realpolitik at its most venal, the prostration of a vassal before its master, he who personifies the anti-hero to Western hegemony but is simply intent on expanding his brand of uber-macho kleptocracy. It speaks of one lacking character, one with a deep-seated insecurity, hence eager to please the powers he chooses to suck up to. It is simply contemptible.

The tone-deafness of the defence minister, Thandi Modise, attending the Russian Motherland Defenders Day event shortly after the invasion beggars belief, an egregious insult to the victims of this act of naked aggression. The most preposterous statement from Ramaphosa was that it was such a pity the US imposed conditions on possible talks with Putin, otherwise he may not have invaded. So, it’s actually the fault of the Americans!

It’s not a great signal to send our biggest foreign investors. But then, birds of a feather flock together — every now and then the ANC shows us how utterly bereft it is of all moral judgment. SA has long ceased to be the miracle nation, its leaders content to fester in the backwaters, keeping the company of global pariahs. As a lightweight coward, it deserves to be ignored and disrespected.

Stef Naude
Kenilworth

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