EDITORIAL: Sacrificing South Africa to protect a war criminal

Rather than doing the obvious thing, the South African government has embarked on a fool’s errand by sending a delegation to the US with the inexplicable goal of helping Russian President Vladimir Putin escape accountability for the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian toadies that we are, our delegation is looking for a “diplomatic solution” to an entirely self-made problem. Should Friend Putin attend the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in Durban in August, the government — as a signatory to the Rome Statute — will be obliged to serve a warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and arrest him for war crimes. 

It would seem to be a straightforward question of law. Yet Naledi Pandor, the once respectable minister of international relations & co-operation, has said the purpose of the visit to the US is to “engage and persuade” stakeholders of South Africa’s position. That position being rather unseemly subservience to a murderous dictator.

More embarrassing, perhaps, is the motivation for the trip in the first place. The ICC — unlike the ANC government — doesn’t change its stance when a self-righteous fist is waved its way. Second, the delegation will be surprised, on arrival, to find that the ICC isn’t in the US. And that the US is actually not even a member of the court. Whoops. 

The obvious, more practical route would be to suggest that the Brics meeting be held elsewhere, on neutral ground. Somewhere South Africa can fawn over Putin without causing an international incident. 

Instead, to justify this extraordinary middle finger to human rights, Pandor has indulged in the sort of soft-brained whataboutism that’s become a hallmark of the ANC — pointing, for example, to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when “there was no naming of leaders of the US”. 

Pandor’s point isn’t entirely irrelevant. There is hypocrisy in the international community; all nations’ rights aren’t given equal weight. But to suggest “two wrongs make a right” is nonsensical.

During a recent visit by Alexander Kozlov, Russia’s minister of natural resources & the environment, Pandor proclaimed Moscow “a friend”, referring to “co-operative partnerships” — including in combating the crime against humanity that was apartheid. Which illustrates, dangerously, that new facts, along with issues of human rights and moral rectitude, mean little to the ANC today: it’s all factional and relative; there is simply no consideration for what the ethically correct course of action might be.

At its elective conference in December, the ANC reconfirmed its commitment to international justice — and to the ICC. The government’s stubborn defence of Putin now reveals that for what it was: a public relations gambit. Put it under the slightest stress, and it falls apart. 

But then the ANC today is ethically tethered to whomever has the largest chequebook. United Manganese Kalahari — a company 49% held by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg as well as five other Russian oligarchs seen as close to the Kremlin — last year donated R15m to South Africa’s cash-strapped governing party. So, you can see why the ANC might be carrying water for the Russian leader.

It’s all terrifically short-sighted. South Africa could end up being far worse off economically for this sycophancy. As Francois Fouche, a research fellow at the Gordon Institute of Business Science’s Centre for African Management & Markets, pointed out in the FM, South African exports to the US amounted to $15.7bn in 2021; exports to Russia came in at just $410m. When it comes to trade, “South Africa needs Russia like a fish needs a bicycle,” he wrote. 

Yet the ANC-led government is risking the country’s economic wellbeing precisely for fear of losing a “friendship” and, one imagines, access to hot money from Putin’s confidantes. Again, it shouldn’t be a surprise. The fig leaf of respectability has long since slipped. For the ANC, it’s not about the country; the only interests that matter are its own.