LETTER: Condemn Nontobeko Hlela’s blatant propaganda as deception

Policy wonk Nontobeko Hlela writes that “powerful forces in SA hold both to exceptionalism and to the view that they are Western, and that it is an aberration that they find themselves on the African continent. This leads to a desire for our foreign policy to be in lockstep with the US, and the West in general.” (“Why SA’s Ukraine policy should not be in lockstep with the West’s,” March 28).

As proof of this she offers nothing more than 2013 correspondence between Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama in the New York Times, attacking what Obama referred to as “American exceptionalism” on the basis, as Putin put it, of the following: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

The irony that Putin is now the aggressor in an invasion of a sovereign, democratic country while his own country is far from being deemed to have free and fair elections, and thus a democracy in any way resembling the West, nor even our own electoral system, appears to be lost on Hlela. She proceeds to make out a rather shoddy and wordy case on why we should probably support Putin, since it “makes no difference what we say”, yet otherwise condemn atrocities around the world wherever they may occur.

While outlining various divergences with US doctrine and foreign policy, she says: “Whether SA comes out in a visceral attack on Russia, as some would like to see, will not change Russia’s position, and it will not help the Ukrainian people in any way.” She then proceeds with a nasty moral solipsism that views all conflicts, whether in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eswatini, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and Zimbabwe, as wrong, except where Russia may be concerned.

One must condemn such blatant propaganda as deception and chicanery. The writer appears to struggle with issues to do with the national interest, public morality and criticism of “whataboutism”, while pushing Pretoria’s line, which embarrassingly aligns with that of the Russian government, the aggressor at the expense of the victims, and which underpins SA's vain and pathetic attempt to mediate, a failed mediation that has absolutely fallen flat.

Last week saw SA’s much-maligned alternative resolution on humanitarian aid, which omitted any mention of Russia, resoundingly rejected by the UN General Assembly, drawing criticism from Ukraine's UN ambassador, who likened the motion to “knowingly giving a dying child a placebo instead of medicine”. That SA was rebuked “for not consulting with Ukraine on the matter” should ring alarm bells that we have cozied up to the aggressor in a way that potentially jeopardises direct foreign investment in our own country.

If the 193 states (unlike SA) that supported the French-German humanitarian proposal are not “exceptional”, then I am afraid Hlela does not know what the word means, and should probably not be writing for a think-tank such as the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

David Robert Lewis
Cape Town

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