South Africa is experiencing its own dilemma since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant last March against Vladimir Putin. This August the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit will be held in the African country and, in the words of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesman, “all heads of state are expected to attend the summit ”.
The problem lies in the conflict of interests that now affect South Africa: firstly, it belongs to the list of countries that recognize the ICC and should comply with the arrest warrant issued; on the other hand, Ramaphosa and his predecessors have repeatedly shown their friendship towards Vladimir Putineven after the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
In strict terms, South Africa should arrest Putin the moment he sets foot on South African soil, on pain of facing a diplomatic crisis with its Western partners and leaving the International Criminal Court in a bad position. The South African government has not denied its dilemma, while it claims to be looking for “alternatives” that allow the summit to be held without major complications. It should be remembered that South Africa is one of the many African countries that have not condemned the invasion of Ukrainewhile the ruling party since Nelson Mandela’s victory at the polls, the African National Congress, maintains a number of historical ties to Russia and the former Soviet Union due to the assistance it was given during its rise in the years of the Cold War.
Dangerous friendships
South Africa was also the scene of the last naval maneuvers carried out jointly between Russia and China, which took place exactly one year after the start of the war in Ukraine, and being as it is Russia is one of the largest arms partners of this African country which a decade ago began to lean in favor of greater partnership, not only with Russia, but also with China to the detriment of the West. The Russian Foreign Minister himself, Sergei Lavrov, visited South Africa last January, a moment he took advantage of to remember that both countries are “friends” and to blame the West for the escalation in the Ukrainian conflict. Faced with the criticism received for his meeting with Lavrov, the South African Foreign Minister criticized “the double standard” to which some nations are subjected by Europe and the United States.
It’s not just the Russian nickel mines, nor the shocking statements of the former South African president, Jacob Zuma, when he described Putin as “a man of peace” in March 2022.; it is that both powers agree on their interest in establishing a new world order where nations like the BRICS make their way. South Africa was even the first African nation to establish diplomatic relations with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, the friendship between South Africa and the West (facilitated, in part, by its white population and the white rulers that followed Mandela) has dragged on for several centuries. South Africa played, to give a significant example, an active role against the communist side in the Angolan civil war, thus supporting to its blood the US policies of the 1970s. Although its relations with the United States have grown cold in recent times (in part due to the accolade given to it by the West when it began to condemn the apartheid)there is still a cultural and commercial hangover in the export of platinum to the United States and the import of machinery, both essential for the South African economy and to stabilize internal relations between whites and blacks.
The appointment that South Africa had been avoiding for thirty years seems inevitable. Despite its supposed neutral position regarding the war in Ukraine, its representatives having stated on numerous occasions that they still believe in the path of dialogue to resolve the conflict, the United States will not forgive Putin visiting Pretoria with impunity. The situation is delicate because the time has come for South Africa to decide, thus irremediably abandoning that lukewarm position that it has tried to maintain until today.
Thus, three possible scenarios are assumed in the next month of August. The first, least likely, would be that Putin would be arrested when he set foot on South African soil. The second, annoying for South Africa and which is supposed to be an outcome that Ramaphosa intends to avoid, would be that Putin is not arrested when he arrives and thus arouses the wrath of the West. The third scenario, which is also the most sensible because it would avoid a dilemma for South Africa and in turn assure Putin, would be that Sergei Lavrov replaces his president representing Russia during the BRICS summit. That the Russian head honcho doesn’t travel to South Africa because of his arrest warrant may be humiliating, although it won’t be as humiliating as a photograph of him in handcuffs with a surprised face.