Ukraine's new Foreign Minister to strengthen ties during visit to South Africa this weekend

Ukraine’s new foreign minister Andrii Sybiha  is scheduled to visit South Africa this weekend on a tour of five Middle Eastern and African countries. 

Sybiha has already visited Türkiye and will visit Oman, Egypt and Angola before arriving in South Africa on 27 October 2024 for a two-day visit, according to his office. 

It will be his first visit to South Africa as foreign minister. He is scheduled to meet his counterpart, Ronald Lamola, and may meet President Cyril Ramaphosa, sources say.

Sybiha, who replaced Dmytro Kuleba in a cabinet reshuffle by President Volodymyr Zelensky last month, will hold talks with “high-ranking South African officials, representatives of the business community, leading experts and the Ukrainian community,” his office said. 

Kuleba made the first visit by a Ukrainian foreign minister to South Africa in November 2023, meeting then international relations and cooperation minister Naledi Pandor.

Peace efforts

Sybiha is expected to focus on Ukraine’s peace efforts in his meetings with Lamola and possibly Ramaphosa. On 20 September he had a phone conversation with Lamola and posted afterwards on X that he had “a fruitful talk with Minister @RonaldLamola. We appreciate RSA’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Zelenskyy #Peace Formula. Agreed to continue our work together until a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace for Ukraine is established.”

Read more: War in Ukraine

South Africa and Ukraine have had a complicated relationship since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. As Sybiha said, Lamola had upheld the principles of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. But Kyiv has been unhappy with Pretoria’s refusal to explicitly criticise Russia’s invasion, and specifically South Africa’s abstention from several UN General Assembly resolutions in 2022 and 2023 condemning Russia’s aggression.

But Ramaphosa’s visits to Ukraine and Russia in 2023 at the head of an Africa peace mission eased relations somewhat. Ramaphosa agreed that South Africa would participate in the international talks Zelensky was then about to launch on his 10-point Peace Formula.

Ramaphosa assigned his national security adviser Sydney Mufamadi and Zane Dangor, the director-general of international relations and cooperation, to participate in a series of talks around the world on the Peace Formula.

These culminated in an international summit in Switzerland in June on some aspects of the Peace Formula that issued a communiqué supporting the formula. But South Africa declined to endorse the communiqué, ostensibly because of the presence of Israel at the summit and because the communiqué criticised threats (by Russia) to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. The South African government said the communiqué failed to condemn nuclear weapons more generally.

Objection

However,  Lamola later told Daily Maverick that his government’s objection to the summit was because Russia did not participate. Ukraine has said it will invite Russia to a follow-up summit, but Russians officials have said they would not attend.

Daily Maverick asked Lamola in an interview this month if South Africa would attend such a summit if Russia was not there, and he said Pretoria would make that decision at the time.

On his visit to South Africa, Sybiha might also discuss arrangements for Zelensky to visit South Africa. The head of his office, Andriy Yermak, told South African journalists in an online briefing this month that Ukraine and South Africa had agreed in principle on a visit by Zelensky, but that no date had been set. 

He also urged South Africa to play a stronger role in peace efforts, saying this was becoming urgent for Ukraine as its situation was becoming increasingly difficult. 

Ukrainian sources say the timing of Sybiha’s visit is turning out to be uncomfortable for Kyiv, which is dismayed about the images of Ramaphosa warmly embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the BRICS summit in Kazan Russia this week.

Read more in Daily Maverick:  Zelensky hopes Ramaphosa will help him get invite to G20 summit

Daily Maverick reported earlier that Zelensky is hoping that Ramaphosa will persuade Brazilian President Lula da Silva to invite him to the G20 summit in Brazil next month for a broader discussion on how to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.  DM