The government detests attempts by powerful Western countries to bully it into adopting their stance on the wars raging around the globe. Instead, they should respect South Africa as a sovereign nation capable of making its own decisions, says President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national security adviser Sydney Mufamadi.
He described to the Sunday Times this week the pressure the government faced from countries such as the US to denounce Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
Several incidents took place after South Africa’s decision to take a neutral and anti-war stance by abstaining from a resolution condemning Russia at the UN General Assembly.
US ambassador Reuben Brigety alleged that South Africa armed Russia, claiming that weapons were loaded onto a ship in Cape Town in December. It was later found that the allegations were not backed by evidence, but the damage had been done.
Some US senators called for South Africa to be removed from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which is designed to assist the economies of the region.
Mufamadi said this was again pressure on South Africa over its stance on Russia.
“We don't take kindly to being bullied into looking at situations through lenses that are not of our sovereign choosing,” said Mufamadi.
“We are not shy to state our mind and we jealously guard our sovereign right to respond to situations on the basis of our own analysis of what is involved.
“For instance, we don't look at Russia's involvement in this conflict through a Russophobic lens, Russophobia being hatred for anything Russian. Neither do we approach the situation from the point of view of Russophilia, an unthinking embrace of everything Russian even if some of it is wrong.”
Had South Africa not taken a neutral and anti-war stance on the conflict it would not have been able to lead the African Peace Initiative that was embraced by both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
South Africa refused to be “part of the problem” by looking at the conflict from a “devil” versus “angel” perspective.
It was therefore in the “unique position” of being able to get an audience with both presidents for negotiations, which were now bearing fruit.
“Some were trying to say to us ‘show that you are not neutral’, when in fact we were already beginning to reach out to both Russia and Ukraine. We are part of the African Peace Initiative, which has started to move the needle in the right direction,” he said.
“The Ukrainians and Russians have started to exchange prisoners; children that are in Russia when they are supposed to be in Ukraine are beginning to be returned to Ukraine as a result of the intervention by a collective of African leaders. We wouldn’t have been able to be in this unique position of having access to both sides.”
Mufamadi said that South Africa has historical ties with Ukraine and Russia as both countries contributed to the struggle against apartheid.
“Russia and Ukraine were historically part of the Soviet Union; they were part of a bloc of existing socialism there and that is a bloc which was really a bulwark of support for not only our struggles here in South Africa but many anti-colonial struggles.”
The ANC sent members to both countries to acquire skills needed for the struggle for liberation and for governing a post-apartheid South Africa.
They included Moses Mabhida, Joe Modise, Jacqueline Modise and Josiah Jele, who were trained in Ukraine; and Chris Hani, Thabo Mbeki, Joel Netshitenzhe, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Mavuso Msimang and Ahmed Timol, who were trained in Russia.
“So I’m saying these two countries and their people mean a lot to us, the sacrifices they made deserve reciprocity from us. And the way we can reciprocate what they did for us is to find a way of helping them to nurse their own relationship back into one that is based on peaceful coexistence as neighbours — and that is what we have always been trying to do,” Mufamadi said.
“There are certain assumptions that some people have made. One is that Russia and Ukraine are ... natural opposites ... one is inherently evil [Russia] and the other is inherently good [Ukraine].”
This was unhelpful as it made it difficult for the conflicting parties to interact with each other to achieve peace.
It also applied, he said, to Israel and the Palestinians.
“The conflict right now between Israel and Palestine, there too [there] has to be a realisation that we can’t allow diplomacy to be trumped by warmongering.
“If there is no visibility of an effort to achieve a de-escalation of that conflict and create conditions for the parties to reach out to each other, that is a serious indictment on the rest of us who are not immediately involved in that conflict ... Nothing should be done by anybody to encourage one or the other of these parties to seek to annihilate their opponent.”
Mufamadi said the South African government’s position on the conflict was that the laws of war must be respected and there should not be any further loss of civilian life
He denounced countries that voted at the UN Security Council this week against the opening of humanitarian corridors to provide aid to victims of the war.
Mufamadi said it was concerning that the moral conscience of policymakers was “receding”.
This was also happening in universities, where there was “no longer the critical thinking against conservative policy decisions of their governments, particularly those that were in support of the apartheid regime and similar authoritarian regimes”.
“Right now Prime Minister [Rishi] Sunak of the UK is ignoring voices of protest as citizens are taking to the streets, so he is flying to Israel not necessarily to try to give voice to his own people's call for de-escalation of the conflict,” he said.
“All I’m saying is that practitioners of state craft must know that they have an obligation to listen to the people.”
Pahad's foresight would have ended conflicts
Sydney Mufamadi said the consummate diplomacy of late former deputy foreign affairs minister Aziz Pahad would have been critical in helping South Africa navigate current geopolitics.
He would have proved critical in this role, as South Africa is heavily involved in mediating some of the most violent conflicts on the continent and beyond.
Mufamadi said this was because of Pahad’s extensive experience in mediation and conflict resolution.
He would have been able to guide countries embroiled in war just as he did when the US was about to invade Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction.
Mufamadi recalled how Pahad travelled to Baghdad to persuade Saddam Hussein to co-operate with UN inspectors to prove he did not have such an arsenal.
“He also went to Washington, and I travelled with him, to persuade the Americans then under George W Bush jnr not to invade Iraq — in the first instance because we were convinced that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, but secondly because we thought it was an avoidable war,” he said.
“The Americans thought they were going to go in for a very short while and come out victorious, [that] they were going to come out having imposed their own notion of democracy on Iraq. They got trapped in a quagmire in Iraq for many, many years, and none of the objectives they said they were going to achieve were achieved.
“They came out and Iraq was more unstable than it [had been] before they went in, [as well as] more fractious, which then means that they themselves suffered a strategic defeat, because they did not achieve the strategic objectives for which they said they were going into Iraq.”
Mufamadi said there were now Americans who in hindsight agreed with South Africa that it was wrong to invade Iraq.
“But what you needed was not hindsight to do the right thing — what you needed was the ... foresight which people like Aziz actually had. So he was sharing that foresight with them for the sake of peace and for the sake of peaceful human existence. So people like Aziz are really needed now more than ever when we are facing these resurgences of needless conflicts,” he said.
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