Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in Pretoria on Monday for talks with one of Moscow's most important allies in Africa. The visit comes as South Africa prepares for joint naval drills with Russia and China next month.
The South African military will host a joint military exercise with Russia and China on its east coast from February 17 to 27. The naval drills will coincide with the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
While South Africa has little trade with Moscow, it supports the stance of Russia and China against a perceived US-hegemony in favor of a "multipolar" world.
South Africa's ruling party for the past three decades, the African National Congress (ANC), is also strongly beholden to the Kremlin for its moral and military support in the fight against apartheid.
South Africa's professed neutrality has disappointed its Western partners, who consider the country crucial to their plans to strengthen relationships with Africa. South Africa's Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor on Monday reacted to criticism of the planned joint military drills, saying that hosting such exercises with "friends" was the "natural course of relations."
Criticism in South Africa
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has offered to mediate in the Ukraine conflict, insists that his government is impartial. The political opposition and many civil society representatives beg to differ.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that the South African government is openly siding with Russia," said Darren Bergman, of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party.
"South Africa's position is a bad situation of totally sitting on the fence," William Gumede, chairperson of the Johannesburg-based Democracy Works Foundation, told DW. "It's a really unconstitutional position to take, because our Constitution is very clear that our foreign policy must support human rights," said the researcher and lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand.
This is Lavrov's second African visit in six months. It comes ahead of the Russia-Africa summit, which was last year postponed to July 2023 due to the Ukraine conflict.
A South African official, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak, said Lavrov would visit Eswatini, Botswana and Angola too.
Ukraine's plea for support
The Embassy of Ukraine in Pretoria has asked the South African government to help push the 10-point peace plan that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed to the G20 in November.
Zelenskyy has tried to strengthen Ukraine's ties with Africa, with little success so far. Most African nations are loathe to take sides, as was made clear at the UN General Assembly's vote to suspend Russia's membership of the Human Rights Council in April 2022, when only 10 out of 54 African states voted in favor. Nine opposed the resolution and 35 abstained or were absent.
A month earlier, only 28 African countries had supported a UN resolution that called for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
Russia is currently the largest exporter of weapons to the African continent. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's (SIPRI) annual 2020 report, arms exports to Africa accounted for 18% of all Russian arms exports between 2016 and 2020.
In January 2022, hundreds of Russian military advisors were deployed to Mali. According to the Malian army, contractors from the controversial Russian military group Wagner Group were invited to "help Mali train its security forces."
Mali's southern neighbor Burkina Faso witnessed its own coup in January. Like its counterparts in Mali, the Burkinabe military has defied calls to hand over power to a civilian government. It, too, has oriented itself toward Moscow.
Russian military training and coups
Sudan, Chad, Guinea and Guinea Bissau have also experienced coups in recent years. Most of the soldiers behind each of these coups had received military training sponsored by Russia.
According to Irina Filatova from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia aims to gain a foothold on the continent as a security broker in order to "confront the collective West" and project the image of a "defender of Africa" -- an objective the West has seemingly failed to achieve.
After the Second World War and well into the 1970's, the Kremlin backed liberation movements across the continent. At the time, Russia's main export was light-to-medium-range arms and ammunition.
Moscow's influence was welcomed by many. "Without the firm stand of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the heyday of the anti-colonial struggle, many of our countries would never have seen the light of independence," Obadiah Mailafia, a former deputy governor of Nigeria's central bank, told DW.
This support waned following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. But over the past two decades, Russia's leaders have tried to revive those independence-era connections.
Russia has officially remained silent on its policies for Africa. But, as Filatova sees it, Moscow is relying on private military companies like the Wagner Group to act as "door-openers."
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"Officially, [the military groups] are not incorporated in the strategy at all. But what we see is that they always come first when there's some instability, and then they help secure those in power who have built relationships with Russia," she told DW.
African countries sought Russia's help
The first arms deal to be made public was the sale of a Russian-made assault boat to an unnamed country in sub-Saharan Africa. The supplier, Rosoboronexport -- Russia's only state-owned arms supplier -- confirmed the deal in April 2020.
A few months earlier, in 2019, the first-ever Russia-Africa Economic Forum was held in Sochi, with many big names in African politics in attendance. Russia used the occasion to elegantly tout its track record in Africa. By then it had made a name for itself as an ally of multiple nations as they battled relentless insurgencies:
In 2018, Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania all appealed to Moscow for help combating the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaida.
Beyond military services, Moscow has also carved a niche selling nuclear technology to developing nations. Zambia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Egypt and Nigeria are among those in the market for Russian-built nuclear power plants.
Edited by: Benita van Eyssen
