South Africa set to welcome Russian warships despite criticism

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa

South Africa will next month go ahead with naval exercises off its east coast with Russian and Chinese warships in a decision that could further strain its relationship with some of its biggest trading partners.

Operation Mosi, which means “smoke”, will take place from February 17 to 26.

South Africa’s reluctance to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its decision to allow sanctioned Russian vessels to dock at its ports have already ramped up tensions with the US, UK and EU who are backing Ukraine in the conflict.

The opposition party, Democratic Alliance has questioned the wisdom of going ahead with the exercises. 

“This gives the impression of not being neutral but being biased to one side. Clearly it can alienate us from important trade partners, the West,” said DA shadow defence minister Kobus Marais.

“This is in the best interests of Russia,” Marais said, calling it “another bad judgment, an embarrassment”.

While the exercise follows a similar event in 2019, it comes about a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, an event that brought into the open South Africa’s close ties with Russia due to historical support for the country’s liberation struggle and their membership of the Brics group of nations. 

The US, Germany, Japan and the UK are leading trading partners for South Africa, while Russia isn’t in the top 15. Spokespeople from South Africa’s defence ministry and navy didn’t answer calls or immediately reply to emails. 

Moscow’s invasion, the biggest in Europe since World War II, has been widely condemned internationally.

Western governments have hit Russia with diplomatic isolation and heavy sanctions and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine to defend itself.

Steven Gruzd, the head of the Russia-Africa program at the South African Institute of International Affairs, says South Africa’s hosting the drills risks its further isolation from the West while playing into Russia’s hands.

“Russia is trying to indicate that it’s not isolated internationally, that it has international military reach. And South Africa, by agreeing to hold these exercises, or going ahead with them, is feeding into that narrative that Moscow’s putting out,” he said.

South Africa’s African National Congress party has close ideological and historical ties to Russia under the Soviet Union, which backed its anti-apartheid struggle against white minority rule.

South Africa and Russia are also members of the BRICS group of leading, emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, and China.

While many countries have shunned the Kremlin over its invasion, some nations, including those in BRICS, have not.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to South Africa Liubov Abravitova was clear to VOA in her criticism of the scheduled military drills.

“And on South Africa, Russia, China military exercises, let me just ask you, what the army that is killing innocent people, the army of rapists and murderers, what can they bring to [the] South African army as added value?” she said.

Some analysts say the world is in a new cold war, with authoritarian nations China and Russia on one side and Western democracies on the other.