U.S., South Africa work to ease fallout over Russia

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — South Africa’s delicate balancing act over Russia and the Ukraine war and the strain it has brought to relations with the United States were on full display late last month during a trip to Pretoria by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

Officially on a visit to push green energy to a country that still gets 80% of its electricity from coal, Ms. Baerdock went off-script with some sharp words denouncing alleged war crimes by Russian troops in their 16-month invasion of Ukraine.

“For this suffering to end, the war must end,” she said. “And for the war to end, Russia must stop the bombing and withdraw its soldiers. This war is an attack on the U.N. charter, on the very rules that bind and protect us all.”

They were remarks that once might have drawn a barbed response from the host. South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has historic links to Moscow dating back to the days of apartheid and the Cold War but has been studiously neutral in the face of a U.S.-led campaign to condemn Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The country is also a member of “BRICS,” a loose but high-profile group of rising global powers named for its members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The forum has positioned itself as an alternative to what some see as domination by the West, along with calls for a currency to replace the U.S. dollar in world trade.

But South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor declined to push back against Ms. Baerbock’s remarks, speaking blandly of the “very substantial” bond with Germany — South Africa’s third largest trading partner after the U.S. and China — and the two nations’ “common values on matters of peace, security and human rights.”

A war in the heart of Europe has put new strains both on the country’s traditional foreign policy stance and more particularly on relations with Washington. The possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin — who is himself facing war crimes charges — might visit here for a summit of BRICS’ leaders next month only increased the tension.

South Africa has repeatedly claimed to have a “nonaligned stance” on the war and has abstained from every United Nations vote on the matter. But in February, the country’s armed forces carried out a joint training exercise with the Russian navy, and Mr. Putin’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, a pariah now in many Western capitals, has made at least three visits here this year.

A delegation of the ANC elite, including Deputy Foreign Minister Alvin Botes, traveled to Russia for talks on a “recalibration of the global order,” and, more significantly, South African army chief Lt. Gen. Lawrence Mbatha followed in June for talks with Gen. Oleg Salyukov, commander-in-chief of Russia’s ground forces, who described the trip as a “goodwill visit.”

Also in June, President Cyril Ramaphosa led a “peace mission” first to Kyiv, then Moscow. His efforts got scant response from either Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Mr. Putin, with each blaming the other for the conflict.

South Africa’s diplomatic outreach to the Kremlin set off fresh alarm bells for the Biden administration, anxious to shore up ties with a key partner in the developing world.

On June 29, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Mrs. Pandor for her view on the meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Ramaphosa.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at the time that Mr. Blinken had been clear about “the U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that the source of the problem was “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war.”

Patching things up

But there are also signs both Washington and Pretoria are trying to minimize the diplomatic rupture after a particularly trying spell. The U.S. has had an embassy here for more than a century and over that time the two countries have been allies in both world wars and on the Korean Peninsula, along with service on U.N. missions.

Senior members of the Biden administration have been to South Africa this year, including Mr. Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. More visits are expected.

The relationship had threatened to derail when U.S. Ambassador Reuben Brigety told reporters in May that the “Lady R,” a sanctioned Russian cargo ship that had docked near Cape Town shortly before Christmas, had been loaded with weapons before it sailed home to Russia. That would have poked a hole in NATO’s campaign to enforce an embargo on arms to fuel the Kremlin’s Ukraine war.

South Africa, Mr. Brigety said, had sold arms of war to Mr. Putin, adding, “I would bet my life on it.”

Within a week, the ambassador admitted he could produce neither a manifest nor any other evidence to back his claim and he issued a formal apology. In a sign of the importance South Africa attaches to relations with Washington, Mrs. Pandor said that no further action would be taken over the statement, and no harm had been done to bilateral ties.

Press reports last month that the Ramaphosa government may not make public its internal investigation into the Lady R incident have so far not upset the delicate diplomatic dance with Washington. The government has yet to say how it will handle the report. Diplomats say they have gotten no sign that the report will be buried and say they still expect to see a copy when it is released.

And there are signs that recent events in Eastern Europe may help finesse the diplomatic dilemma over Mr. Putin’s proposed attendance at the August BRICS summit here.

South Africa is a founding member of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin over the conduct of Russian forces in Ukraine. In addition to the strains such a visit would cause for U.S. relations, Mr. Ramaphosa’s government was facing a legal obligation to arrest their guest on arrival.

On Capitol Hill, leading members from both parties had proposed a range of penalties against Pretoria including sanctions if the Putin visit goes ahead.

But the short-lived mutiny late last month by the Wagner Group of mercenaries may have solved the problem. Sources close to the ANC say they are now “almost certain” that the Russian president will not go abroad for any length of time given the unprecedented challenge to his rule and is likely to appear at the BRICS meeting by video.

More than three months after receiving the invitation from Mr. Ramaphosa, Mr. Putin is yet to confirm his attendance.

There are also concerns about the fate of Wagner Group deployments in other African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic. The Kremlin has admitted to spending more than $2 billion a year to finance the mercenaries, but after the June revolt, analysts say it is difficult to know with any certainty who is paying the bills.

U.S. Embassy spokesman David S. Feldmann told The Washington Times that there remains far more that unites Pretoria and Washington than divides them.

South Africa has long been viewed as a “friend to the United States” and said the two were “working together to promote domestic and international security,” adding there was “also have a strong network of people-to-people relationships,” across business, culture and education.

Mr. Feldman said an estimated 600 American investors and trade partners accounted for 10% of South Africa’s GDP, creating more than 220,000 jobs.

By contrast, for all the historical ties with Moscow, South African trade with Russia is minimal.

Not that the Kremlin isn’t trying: Moscow has been ramping up its lobbying across Africa, with frequent visits by ministers and other officials in an effort to win support for its stances at the United Nations.

The Russian ambassador to Pretoria recently told reporters there was ““no place for neutrality in the modern world.”