The allegations of arms shipments to Russia have raised doubts about South Africa’s neutral stance on the Ukraine conflict. These accusations have strained relations with the West, risking the loss of South Africa’s duty-free access to the US market. The South African Reserve Bank has also expressed concerns about potential censure due to perceived closeness to Russia. In an interview with BizNews, a veteran writer on foreign affairs and diplomacy, Jean Jacques Cornish warned the South African Government not to underestimate the significance of the US government. People, he said, often say, “Don’t poke the Russian Bear, but he would say, “Don’t put your finger in the eye of the American Eagle, because it is going to cause you a lot of trouble.” Meanwhile sources in London have indicated that senior South African government figures were urging President Cyril Ramaphosa to move the summit to avoid the Putin dilemma. – LInda van Tilburg
Watch here
Relevant timestamps from the interview
- 01:01 – Jean-Jacques Cornish takes us through his extensive CV
- 02:53 – Cornish on South Africa’s failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
- 06:33 – On the general feelings of the diplomatic community towards SA
- 10:29 – On SA’s influence over Russia, or lack thereof, and a possible Putin visit at the upcoming BRICS summit
- 14:03 – On the boundaries of the diplomatic immunity awarded to BRICS attendees
- 15:33 – On the likelihood of sanctions being implemented against SA
- 18:23 – On the diplomatic reaction to Defence Minister Thandi Modise’s colloquial usage of the term “fokol” when referring to what was loaded onto Lady R
- 19:13 – On the likelihood of Russian President Vladimir Putin setting foot in South Africa
- 20:37 – On President Ramaphosa’s struggle to appease the West, compared to former presidents Mandela and Mbeki
- 22:34 – On the USA and SA’s historic relationship with America
- 25:10 – On the ANC government’s loss of the moral high ground diplomatically
Listen here
Excerpts from the interview below
No word from the US on AGOA, feeling in Washington SA is getting too much
The United States, you can’t get them to say, well, this is going to affect the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA, which gives free access to US markets for African goods from countries that have the stamp of approval by the United States, in other words, democratic states, and PEPFAR, the fight against AIDS, which is for the United States, one of their most successful foreign policy initiatives. These are the two areas that we might take flak on.
The most important thing is that on AGOA, on the trade one, which is what everybody is worried about most. Speaking to Welile Nhlapo when he was ambassador to the United States, and that’s long before all this was happening, he was dealing with a bipartisan feeling, Democrats and Republicans, that South Africa was getting just too much out of AGOA. Many of the countries, Lesotho and others are coming with, say, textiles or agricultural produce, one or two things that they are selling in the United States. We in South Africa are selling a raft of things, and we are getting a huge amount out of PEPFAR and we are perfectly entitled to it. But there is a feeling within Washington that we are just getting too much and that they should make a special case of us. Thus far, we’ve avoided it. But it is possible that now that with this new static in the air, they might say, okay, well, we’re going to have to look again at AGOA that’s got nothing to do with the ship loading up in Simon’s town, but the fact that you’re actually getting too much out of it and it’s not fair.
South Africa does not have the stomach to arrest Putin
To give visiting diplomats diplomatic immunity is not surprising. Every single diplomat in this country hosted here has diplomatic immunity. So when you have an international conference, the BRICS summit, for example, or any other one, anybody attending that should have diplomatic immunity. I think there is a lot of wind without any very real substance. I see the DA’s, Glynnis Breitenbach, is looking at doing something to try to force the government and that’s what they did with Omar al-Bashir, try to force the South African authorities to hold him if he comes here… But there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s no stomach for arresting Vladimir Putin if he did come to South Africa. But I do believe that the diplomats in Moscow are working very hard to say, what are we trying to do? We want to achieve something at the summit. Do we want to derail the whole thing or do we want to obfuscate the whole thing by having this incident? There would be no other story outside of BRICS and it’s a development community, a development family that has many, many things that they want to get done and if they want to do them at our summit, they would do better not to have Vladimir Putin there.
Read more: Paranoid Putin is packing for Pretoria, but Russia has little to offer South Africa
Why Russia fears Ukraine
Russia has divested itself of these countries but is unable to control them and should be unable to control them because they are independent countries. Russia, of course, is very, very fearful of Ukraine for political reasons, but for important geographic reasons. There are no mountains between Russia and Europe to the west of Russia. People like Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolph Hitler could decide to invade Russia and could simply move across the territory and move into Russia. Had there been mountains where Ukraine was, Ukraine would have been safe. Russia would have had a natural boundary that they didn’t have. So, they are very nervous about this. But the fact remains they’ve invaded an independent country and we as Africans, taking a moral stand on foreign policy, should really have condemned this and we haven’t. The whole African bloc has not failed to condemn it, just some members and we are one of them, sad to say.
There’s no failed state in the world
I’m often irritated by what they [the Americans] do. How, for example, they dismiss countries that they are unable to deal with as so-called failed states when there is no failed state in the world, there’s no such thing. Some states fail at some things. In the case of the United States, if you said, well, there is this country that has mass murders every couple of weeks of schoolchildren and innocent people, and you never call that a failed state because that country is the United States. They call Africans and Asians and South Americans that they can’t deal with failed states. They do it incorrectly and with malice. As I say, there’s enough for me to get irritated about. But I do recognise the importance of this country to us. People often say, Don’t poke the bear, Don’t irritate Russia. I say, Don’t put your finger in the eye of the American eagle because that’s going to cause you a great deal more trouble.
Read also:
- BRICS: From investment slogan to global power club — Iran, Saudi Arabia, and 17 others now want in
- Secretary-General Mbalula dodges accountability as SA’s problems continue to pile up – Ivo Vegter
- Ramaphosa stands firm: SA non-aligned in Russia-Ukraine conflict
- SA’s arms control under global scrutiny following arms-to-Russia allegations
