MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Indecisive foreign policy makes the US scorn SA

A few days ago, the US ambassador to SA, Reuben E Brigety II accused the South African government of providing ammunition to Russia through a ship that had docked at the Simon’s Town naval base in December. 

He further accused the African National Congress (ANC) of hostility, quoting a policy document from the party’s 55th National Conference, which posited that the Russo-Ukrainian War is the result of the US expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). In response to this dangerous accusation, president Cyril Ramaphosa communicated that a commission of inquiry would be established to ascertain the veracity of the US ambassador’s claims.

The disrespect with which the US government has been treating SA is extremely concerning. Just a year ago, the US government issued a security alert claiming that a terrorist attack was imminent in Sandton. This too was done without any regard for diplomatic protocol, which necessitated that the US government shares its intelligence with its South African counterparts.

It is now becoming common for the US government to bypass diplomatic channels and undermine the sovereignty of the South African state. On the one hand, this is a reflection of the cemented Big Brother tendency of the US and the way in which it engages with developing nations. But another factor informing the behaviour of the US government is the weakness of our own.

Throughout history, the US government has had discomforts about the policy pronouncements of the ANC-led government. The posture of the SA government on the occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state; the decision by SA to form part of Brics, which seeks to challenge the dominance of the West; the non-interference posture that SA took in relation to the Zimbabwean question – are all issues the US government did not agree with.

And yet, even as it strongly criticised us, it understood the importance of recognising and respecting our sovereignty. This had a lot to do with the quality of our leadership and the decisiveness of our foreign policy – even as it may have had its own limitations.

Under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki (and to a degree, even Jacob Zuma, though this later changed) the world could respect us because we were firm in our political convictions. Our foreign policy was clear – we engaged with the world from a position of certainty about our own national interest and sovereign alliances.

When the West was chastising Mandela on his stance on Palestine, he maintained his uncompromising support for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and its leader Yasser Arafat. When the West was chastising Mbeki for his non-interference stance on Zimbabwe, he never wavered on the conviction that the said country should self-determine.

Even Zuma, who had serious faults on foreign policy, maintained some important principles on issues like supporting and strengthening relations with Cuba. But under Ramaphosa, we have become very weak in our posture on how we engage with the world. His response to Brigety II is the evidence.

For one thing, the US government has openly supported Ukraine in the war. It has supplied arms and other financial support. It’s downright hypocrisy for the US to hold anyone accountable for arming Russia when it is arming the Ukraine. That Russia is an enemy of the US doesn’t mean SA should be – especially given the historical ties that we have to Russia owing to its incalculable support for our liberation struggle. Ramaphosa should not have instituted an inquiry, he should have simply clarified our non-alignment stance. Furthermore, he should have defended the ANC view on Nato expansion.

It is an ideologically sound view that is rooted in material fact. And it is a view of branches, which give a mandate to the national executive committee that Ramaphosa leads. Instead, he cowered and once again, exposed to the world just how weak we have become as a country under his spineless and unconvincing leadership.