“There is a difference between the military and the political,” General Siphiwe Sangweni, head of joint operations in the South African armed forces, tried to explain during a press conference at the port of Richards Bay ( east), when controversial naval exercises between South Africa, Russia and China began on February 17.
These naval maneuvers – called Mosi, meaning “smoke” in the Tswana language and taking place in the Indian Ocean off the coast of South Africa – have been planned for a long time, but they come after a tour in Africa of the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, who aimed to establish the strategy of Russian influence on the continent, from Bamako to Khartoum via Nouakchott, after having visited Angola and South Africa at the end of January.
Importantly, these exercises are being held as the whole world commemorates the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Like several African nations, South Africa, the continent’s leading industrial power, refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine during UN General Assembly votes. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has offered (unsuccessfully) to mediate talks between Russia and Ukraine under the authority of the United Nations.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other senior US diplomats have all visited South Africa since the start of the war, but, aware of the weight of history, they do not did not directly criticize Pretoria directly. For its part, the South African government highlights the fact that four joint exercises with the United States since 2011, as well as with France and Germany, have been organized in recent years.
The army is “guided by the government” but must also learn new skills from other armies to protect the country and contribute to international peacekeeping missions, Gen Sangweni further outlined. “Other countries will certainly have a different approach than us” to these joint exercises with Russia and China, but “every country is sovereign and has the right to run things as it sees fit,” he pointed out.
South Africa announced last month the joint exercises with the Russian and Chinese navies “with the aim of sharing operational skills and knowledge”, adding that Russia was the pilot country. Russia has announced that it will send its Admiral Gorshkov warship, which carries Zircon hypersonic missiles. These fly at nine times the speed of sound and have a range of 1,000 km (620 miles). The opportunity for Russia to show that, despite its setbacks in the war in Ukraine, its armed forces are still very powerful. But also for the two countries to highlight their strong historical ties.
During apartheid, the Soviet Union provided money, military training, and other forms of support to the African National Congress, the late Nelson Mandela’s liberation movement, which became the ruling party. In the 1970s, large numbers of ANC cadres fled police brutality, often finding refuge in the former USSR. There they joined the armed wing of the liberation movements of the ANC or the Pan-African Congress, and could receive full military training by Soviet instructors.
The United States government, for its part, branded the ANC a terrorist organization at the time and did not officially support sanctions against the apartheid regime until 1986, just a few years before the final fall of this racist regime. . When Western countries blame Russia for invading Ukraine, South African officials are quick to point to European colonial conquests in Africa and American invasions of countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
In recent years, ties between South Africa and Russia have only deepened with the formation of the Brics, the group of major emerging economies, which also includes Brazil, India and China. The bloc, founded in 2001, has positioned itself as a competitor to the West and a voice defending the interests of smaller and developing nations.