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By John J. Metzler
The timing is terrible but intentional. The setting is suspicious. The symbolism is deeply troubling. Almost a year to the day of Vladimir Putin's invasion of neighboring Ukraine, the Russian Navy as well as Chinese Naval units are carrying out ten days of joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean with strategic but officially non-aligned South Africa.
Though we can argue this is a setting 5,500 thousand miles away from the frozen trenches of Ukraine and rather in the warm waters off South Africa, it is a poor rationalization and misses the ideological and political point of closer military coordination between Russian and Chinese naval vessels off the coast of South Africa near the ports of Durban and Richard's Bay.
Not long ago Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Moscow's peripatetic troubleshooter, (some would argue troublemaker) arrived in Pretoria, the South African capital to politically schmooze with key figures in the ruling African National Congress government. Significantly South Africa, along with many other African states, had abstained from criticism of Russia during a number of Ukraine-related U.N. votes over the past year.
Indeed part of the Russian and Chinese political outreach to South Africa is rooted in a simple if imperfect formula; they are all members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) the economic and increasing political club of the world's five leading emerging economies. The BRICS will coincidently hold their annual Summit in Durban, South Africa in August.
Mineral and resource-rich South Africa sits alongside strategic sea lanes of communication around the Cape of Good Hope, and has long been a coveted geopolitical chess piece from the days of the former British Empire. The crucial Simon's Town Naval base is not far from Cape Town.
Though South Africa is saddled with widening corruption, crumbling infrastructure, and creeping authoritarianism, this is of little concern to either Moscow or Beijing. Rather, it is almost part of a favored model dealing with resource-rich states, whose regimes willingly dovetail with political and economic support from Russia and China as coalition clients.
Recently President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a state of disaster over electricity supply shortfalls that pushed Eskom, the state-run electric supplier, to implement load-shedding to protect the power grid from collapse.
South Africa's ruling African National Congress has long-standing historic political links to former Soviet Russia, which supported its armed struggle against the former Pretoria apartheid government, which itself during the Cold War was close to many Western countries.
Fortunately, there is considerable political push-back among South Africa's still vocal opposition parties and figures. When the Russian missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov docked in Cape Town Harbour en route to the maneuvers last weekend, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis tweeted, "We are not hosting this warship, nor is it welcome… Cape Town will not be complicit in Russia's evil war." The Gorshkov vessel came with the emblazoned letter Z symbol Russia uses to support the war in Ukraine. More menacingly the ship carries hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles.
The Sino/Russian/South African maritime exercise Moisi II coincided with South Africa's Armed Forces Day.
The opposition party Democratic Alliance Shadow Defense Minister Kobus Marais stated, "While the South African government claims to be neutral, this is another of many incidents where the majority party has shown its favoritism to Russia."
Cited in the respected South African DefenseWeb, he added poignantly, that Russia's intent "is to showcase its geopolitical influence in southern Africa."
Nonetheless, the once highly rated South African Navy faces a serious state of disrepair.
Viewing the crucial economic sphere, currently South Africa's two-way trade reached $53 billion with the European Union last year compared to a paltry $750 million with Russia. U.S. two-way trade with South Africa in 2022 hit $21 billion.
Facing the ongoing Ukraine war, the African continent has emerged as a new political battleground for reinvigorated Russian and Chinese influence operations; wooing states towards Moscow and Beijing as during the Cold War. Given its geography, South Africa has become a nexus for revived competing power games between East and West.
John J. Metzler (jjmcolumn@earthlink.net) is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of "Divided Dynamism ― The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China."
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