Harare, Zimbabwe: A large Russian warship armed with a rugged Zircon hypersonic missile, a handful of Chinese naval destroyers and a multitude of frigates and source ships docked off the South African coast last Saturday.
The Russian and Chinese maritime firepower clique, which can bring the armed forces of a poorly supplied African country to its knees, would spend days parading in planned tri-national naval training off the coast of Durban in the east of the country.
A year ago, it would have been hard to believe that South Africa, which has taken a publicly “neutral” stance on the war in Ukraine, would choose to host such an occasion with Russia while invading its neighbor.
“[The position of] neutrality can cost,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in an interview with Bloomberg last March. “And fortunately, we are not in all this, there are many others who have chosen the same path. The merit in all this is that we can communicate it to either party.
The old guard of African politics shared the sentiments.
“We are not enemies of someone’s enemy,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, in force since 1986, said in July last year after receiving Russian Business Minister Sergey Lavrov during his tour of African countries to gather aid for the war in Ukraine. . Formation
On a continental level, it is a similar melody.
Of the 35 countries that abstained from voting on a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) solution last March condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 17 were African.
“We don’t need to be aligned with this conflict, very clearly, we need peace,” said Senegalese President Macky Sall, then president of the African Union (AU).
Fast forward to a year later and with no end to the war in sight, it turns out that many African nations maintain their neutral position.
In a UNGA vote last week, not easy, Moscow withdrew troops from Ukraine and ended the fighting, 32 countries abstained, 15 African.
South Africa, which conducts its joint naval training with Russia the same week as the war’s anniversary, among the abstentions.
Piers Pigou, the International Crisis Group’s senior representative for southern Africa, said the continent’s stance on neutrality had changed.
“The problem, of course, is the lens of [South Africa’s naval clashes at] that moment. It is unexpected that they did not know in advance that the timing of this would be awkward. But they don’t seem to care too much,” Pigou told Al Jazeera.
“That means they’re redoubling their efforts in a position that they say is not aligned, but actually gives a lot of other people the impression that they support them. “
And optics to be everything.
“The United States has considerations about any matrix of countries . . . exercising with Russia while Russia wages a brutal war against Ukraine,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last month in reaction to questions about South Africa’s naval training with Russia.
This occurred at the same time as the U. S. The US was contemplating the introduction of a bill that would require Washington to punish African countries that aid and are complicit in what it considers Russia’s “malignant” activities on the continent.
Called the Combating Russian Malicious Activities in Africa Act, which is expected to be enacted soon, it aims to counter what the U. S. is trying to do with the U. S. in the country. The US considers Russia and its proxies on the continent to be hostile to influence.
The law “causes a bit of controversy with the punishment of countries trading with Russia,” Pigou said, adding that it is “the big stone in the shoe right now. “
On the African continent, however, where Washington suffers diplomatically, Russia is triumphing.
Foreign Minister Lavrov, who last year met with the leaders of Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Eritrea, South Africa, Egypt, the Republic of Congo, Uganda and Ethiopia on a series of trips to the continent, was diplomatically delighted.
Of the 4 states he first visited in July, 3 (Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda) abstained at the UNGA assembly in October when asked to vote to condemn Russia’s attempts to annex Ukrainian regions.
Aside from the Ukraine conflict, Russia has also made major inroads into other parts of Africa, adding Sudan, the Central African Republic and Mali, where the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization connected to Moscow, is involved in the fighting while some Western countries have armed forces, such as the French army in the Sahel. He made the resolution to leave.
Other African countries have forged ties with key allies of Russia. Zimbabwe, for example, which has enjoyed coolness with the West since the implementation of Robert Mugabe’s policy of seizing and redistributing land to the black majority, last month welcomed Russia’s biggest ally, the Belarusian president. Aleksandr Lukanhesko.
Russia has longstanding ties with the continent dating back to the Soviet Union, which supported many independences in Africa at a time of Western political dominance.
During apartheid in South Africa, the Soviets submitted investment and paramilitary education to the liberation motion that became the ruling African National Congress (ANC) after democracy in 1994. In Zimbabwe, he was part of the African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) when the party fought against a Rhodesian settler government from the 1960s until independence in 1980. And in Angola, it provided army to the Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (MPLA) from the 1960s until independence from Portugal in 1975 at the height of the Cold War.
“Loyalty to Russia was based on their support, like the Soviet Union, the struggle for independence was strong,” said Stephen Chan, a professor of global politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. So the neutrality stance [is] a little short to have either meaning. “
Regarding Ukraine, Chan said African states decide on sides rather than being perceived as supporting Russia while being comfortable with their enemies.
The war in Ukraine has the inability of African nations to diplomatically navigate an unknown political order, Chan explained.
“This has led to a three-way struggle for influence in Africa: the West is taking seriously the demanding situations posed by Russia and China so far,” he told Al Jazeera.
In the bipolar political order, an era ruled by Russia and the United States, and in the unipolar political order that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, making the United States the sole superpower, the selection is undeniable, whether Russia or the United States. . Today, however, it is a choice between 3 powers: the United States, Russia and China.
“Africa will find it difficult to chart a balanced path that is well woven between three superpowers,” Chan said.
This view is shared by Ronald Chipaike, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Governance at the University of Bindura in Zimbabwe.
“Africa didn’t get many advantages from its neutrality in the conflict, just as it didn’t get many advantages from the Cold War,” he said, adding that the continent would only gain “fragile” advantages, such as saving Africa from a “direct confrontation with the West or Russia. “
Although the AU claims to be neutral, when Ukrainian Preaspectnt Volodymyr Zelenskyy made diplomatic overtures last April for a video conference with African leaders through the AU, to unite them alongside Ukraine, the request was continuously rejected and only arrived in June – 10 weeks after its first request.
Even then, 4 heads of state were provided while the others sent emissaries.
“It shows that African countries seem to have a comfortable place for Russia and calls for the total factor of neutrality,” Chipaike told Al Jazeera.
In a context of conversion of the political and diplomatic posture of leaders on the ground, the chains long interrupted by war have not yet been normalized. Africa bears the brunt of food shortages and inflation given its heavy dependence on imports.
African countries, which import 50% of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine, saw a 71% jump last March.
Although the food scenario has advanced as more grains leave Black Sea ports and arrive in African countries, the scenario on the continent is far from normal.
Today, the costs are much higher, eroding the strength of many Africans.
Of the 24 countries in desperate need of food aid that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have identified as critical famine zones, 16 are in Africa, due to global resource constraints, the war in Ukraine, COVID-19 and climate change.
In addition, a poor rice season last year will have effects in Africa, according to a joint statement by FAO, WFP and the International Monetary Fund in early February.
Before the war, about 283 million people were already “hungry” in Africa, according to the African Development Bank.
In addition to food, Africa has had to contend with the racial undertones of the conflict.
When war broke out, African academics in Ukraine reported episodes of racial abuse and discrimination at borders when they tried to cross for protection in neighboring countries along with European refugees they used to welcome with open arms.
On the other side of the war lines, that of black Africans is precarious in other respects.
Last year, a Zambian student was killed in Ukraine while fighting for Russia.
The student, Lemekhani Nyirenda, who had no military training, was deployed to the front through the Russian mercenary group Wagner. It’s unclear how Nyirenda, who was serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian prison for a drug-related offense, ended up. in Ukraine; However, the Russian government said he had been pardoned before joining the war.
Another Tanzanian student, Nemes Tarimo, also died in Ukraine after being recruited by a Russian criminal where he was serving a seven-year sentence for a drug-related offense.
In the most recent UNGA vote on Thursday, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Zambia joined 140 other countries in supporting the solution calling for an end to the war, while Tanzania recorded a vote.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, which continued to abstain from UN votes on the war because of its commitment to neutrality, naval training with Russia continued as planned, despite Western tension and complaints about the callousness of the moment.
“There is a difference between the military and politics,” Lt. Gen. Siphiwe Sangweni, head of joint operations for the South African National Defence Force, said Wednesday, protecting the resolution to conduct the exercises.
“Yes, there will be other countries that will feel about the way we approach this, but. . . All countries are sovereign nations and have the right to take care of things [as] they see fit,” he said.