The war in the Ukraine certainly makes for strange bedfellows, but can President Biden’s “supercharged” Africa policy counteract China and Russia’s subtle wooing? Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov’s African charm offensive continues apace, with China at the fore of the background, burnishing roses.
When did Putin’s blossoming romance with the African continent begin? It has been nearly a year since March 2, 2022, when the resolution vote at the United Nations to condemn Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine was held. It was, at the time, a serious story, as a head-scratching 17 African countries abstained from the emergency General Assembly vote, with Eritrea joining extreme pro-Russia authoritarian regimes.
While the Resolution passed, thus declaring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a violation of the foundational UN Charter, it also signaled to Putin that Africa, the long-suffering and long-neglected continent, was open for further conversations of alliance as the Ukraine war progressed. Abraham White and Leo Holtz covered the mixed positions of many African countries on the emergency resolution for The Brookings blog:
While the resolution saw widespread support across U.N. members as a whole, African countries were divided in their votes: In fact, 28 out of the 54 African countries (just over 51 percent) represented in the U.N. voted in favor of the resolution (Figure 1), a sharp contrast to the 81.29 percent of non-African countries that voted in favor of the resolution. Of the 35 countries that voted to abstain, 17 (48.6 percent) were African—including Algeria, Angola, and South Africa. Eight African countries, including Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Morocco, did not submit a vote, and only one African country, Eritrea, voted against the resolution, a sentiment shared only by Belarus, Russia, North Korea, and Syria.
That emergency resolution vote still resonates internationally today. And for those that have the ears to hear, behind that unsettling vote was the music of anti-colonialist discourse. America’s sulfurous historical clandestine intelligence operations against the African continent — from the the CIA’s involvement in the Congo Cables and the death of Lumumba to Reagan’s aid to the Apartheid regime in South Africa — are well recorded and have, apparently, come home to roost. President Biden and SecState Blinken have some heavy lifting to do against Putin and Lavrov’s cynical but thus far fairly successful African charm offensive.
The Ukraine War has made the African continent a player on the global stage. Before then, African nations were ripe for the near-plunder of their natural — and rare earth — resources. But in the last few months, with the Ukraine scrambling the geopolitical order, Africa has hosted a gaggle of global leaders crisscrossing the continent to promote economic and diplomatic activity. In December, President Biden hosted the US-Africa Summit, in which nearly 50 African leaders appeared. Biden, offering carrots, announced US support of the African Union joining the G20. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited South Africa, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, just arrived in Ghana and new Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang had his own Africa tour last week. While Chinese trade in Africa is about four times that of the U.S., there are growing questions about the terms — and materials — in their infrastructure agreements across the continent.
South Africa, in particular, is coming more into confluence with Putin’s Russia. In an astonishing recent move, South Africa has agreed to joint naval exercises with Russia and China slated for next month. Further, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor is pushing for a BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- based solution to the Ukrainian War. We cannot fail to note here that the ANC, which has ruled South Africa since 1994, has a long memory.
Russia is counting on that historical animus between the ANC and America to further their strategic goals on the continent. Lavrov, as it happens, is presently in the midst of an African tour, offering anti-colonial rhetoric and carrots. As Elliot Smith writes on CNBC.com:
In a joint press conference alongside Lavrov on Monday, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said it would have been “simplistic and infantile” to demand Russia’s withdrawal during their meeting, and alluded to the “massive transfer of arms” that has since occurred from Western powers to support Ukraine’s military efforts.
Pandor also lauded the “growing economic bilateral relationship” between Pretoria and Moscow, along with “political, economic, social, defense and security cooperation.”
Moscow is taking Pretoria seriously, something Washington has largely failed to do since 1994, when the ANC took control of the former Apartheid state. Further, aside from joint military cooperation on the global stage, Moscow is dangling to Pretoria the carrot of increased influence among the multipolar BRICS at the expense of United States hegemony. And Pretoria, cleverly, is playing the great powers against one another for the best possible geostrategic position. Lavrov, not wasting an opportunity, used the occasion of his diplomatic engagement in South Africa to make a brief stopover in the tiny, largely ignored African kingdom of Eswatini, to pledge “security training.” As Tim Cocks and Carien Duplesis write in Reuters:
Landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique and with a gross domestic product of less than $5 billion, the tiny kingdom of Eswatini doesn't often command the attention of world powers. No Russian diplomat is based there.
Nevertheless Lavrov made a stopover after visiting South Africa, which his counterpart Thulisile Dladla described as a "profound honour." The two sides signed a visa waver agreement.
Eswatini relies on the United States for aid, but its absolute monarchy has suffered U.S. criticism on human rights.
Of course no conversation involving Russia and Africa relations would be complete without bringing up The Wagner Group. Just this week the Treasury has sanctioned Wagner as a transnational criminal organization. The shady Kremlin-tied mercenary group has been scooping up African mines, in the Central African Republic and Sudan. The mines are quite lucrative, to be sure, and the profits have been used to prop up the Putin regime amid international sanctions. But what is most gruesome is how the Wagner Group, no friend to human rights, is going out of its way to recruit African conscripts in Russian prisons for the front lines of the Ukraine War.
What is to be done? Thousands of African students have attended Russian universities, and they are now, and have always been, notorious for pernicious racism. How many African exchange students have been beaten on the streets of Moscow for having dark skin? Just spit-balling here, but perhaps these self-satisfied African leaders, content with crumbs from Lavrov, could consider petitioning Moscow for the better treatment of their next generation of leaders while at school in Russia? Take, just for example, the very recent case of 23-year old Lemekhani Nyirenda of Zambia. Nyirendi, a Zambian foreign exchange student, died in, of all places, the battlefield of the Ukraine. From Kimberly St. Julian Varnon of Aljazeera:
In a November 29 post on the Russian social media platform VKontakte, Wagner founder Evgeny Prigozhin claimed he spoke to Nyirenda, who allegedly told him he had volunteered because: “You, Russian, helped us Africans gain independence. When it was difficult for us, you stretched out a hand to us and continue to do this now. Wagner is saving thousands of Africans; going to war with you is paying back for at least some of our debt to you.”
But Nyirenda’s family has insisted on an investigation into his recruitment, suspecting he may have been coerced. They also say he was wrongfully convicted; he had been working as a courier to support himself while studying in Moscow but was stopped and searched by the police, who found a package he was carrying with drugs in it.
Nyirenda’s death and how the Russian government handled it speak to the glaring gap between Russian official rhetoric and how it treats Africans in reality. While it insists it has an anti-imperialist approach to Africa, Russia has no qualms about victimising Africans on the continent and within its own borders.
Perhaps African leaders, so quick to apply decades-old tied and true anti-colonialist tropes, should make an acute differentiation between Joe Biden and Ronald Reagan. The two Presidents are not commensurate. Also: Anthony Blinken is not Henry Kissinger. It is in the interest of African governments to ask themselves if Putin’s regime — and China’s, for that matter — is really and truly the joy of anti-colonialist discourse. Or, is Vladimir Putin just the next neo-colonialist power that cares more about Africa’s natural resources and geopolitics than it does the lives and well-being of its people.
The stakes on the Continent are immense and the margin for error razor thin.
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