ANC’s kamikaze Russian diplomacy puts SA on the road to economic and reputational ruin

“South Africa is not for sale,” declared International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor last week. She said this in response to increased rumblings from the US that South Africa might have to suffer the consequences of its close relationship with Russia by losing its preferential access to US markets via the Agoa agreement.

Pandor’s seemingly valiant statement is ironic. One of the reasons South Africa remains tied to Russia is that Russia has helped provide a financial lifeline to the ANC. Earlier this year, it was reported that the ANC had received R15-million from a company tied to a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

Following the trail of Russian money in South Africa remains difficult and dangerous, but there is sufficient evidence of a money trail between Pretoria and Moscow to suspect that South Africa’s loyalty has partly been bought. Pandor is losing sight of the fact that human rights compliance has long been one of the conditions for benefitting from trade agreements and other international partnerships.

The South African government cannot continue to be blind to the illegality and inhumanity of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It cannot continue to be blind to the pre-2022 human rights violations committed during Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

If the ANC continues to not honour the human rights commitments on which our constitutional democracy is built, it will lead to economic and reputational ruin. By continuing to support Russia, Pandor and others in the government are committing “kamikaze diplomacy”. This means they are willing to destroy South Africa’s reputation for the sake of supporting Russia.

South Africa’s post-1994 acceptance by the international community and the goodwill we enjoyed in those first decades of democracy were largely built on a foundation of a shared understanding of human rights. The ANC has seemingly forgotten this.

The ANC is also forgetting that the Constitution is a pact between the government and the people. The Constitution contains a series of socioeconomic rights and an undertaking to improve the quality of life of all who live in this country. By alienating us from our major Western trade partners the ANC is failing this central commitment.