South Africa imports 30% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, making the country particularly vulnerable to commodity price increases and shortages.(Photo by ARIS MESSINIS / AFP) (Photo by ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images)
When I departed Ukraine for the United Nations three days ago, to call for an end to Russia‘s senseless slaughter of my people, I left behind a scene that triggered traumatic memories for many elderly Ukrainians. These were the survivors of “Holomodor” – Josef Stalin’s deliberate death-by-starvation policy of 1932-33, a cruel strategy to crush Ukraine’s independence movement. In just two years, seven million Ukrainian people were intentionally killed through food deprivation. Their only crime had been a desire to live freely.
Now, it is happening again. My people’s determination to exist in their own, independent country, free from Moscow, is once more placing them on the brink of death at the hands of an amoral Russian dictator.
In just three weeks, it has become the world’s fastest-growing humanitarian crisis, creating three million refugees. The Kyiv I left was an appalling sight, with terrified families hunkered in underground bunkers. Bombs and artillery raining down on civilian convoys trying to escape. People dying of disease, with medical supplies expired and supply lines cut off. Food running out. In the port city of Mariupol, the Russian strategy is now to starve 400 000 besieged people to death through contestant shelling, so they can never come above ground and find more food – Holomodor all over again.
The compulsion for Africa to stand against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialist ambitions is not just one of basic morality, it is also one of raw pragmatism. A key reason Putin wants to snuff out Ukrainian independence is his rage at our success as a major international actor. Ukraine is now the “breadbasket of Europe” and a key food supplier to the entire world. We provide 50% of global sunflower oil, 18% of maize and 12% of wheat, and our principal export markets are Africa and Asia.
Those essential supplies are now compromised. Between the shelling of farms, the evacuation of the countryside, and the blockading of ports and supply lines, global famine is on the horizon. Grain prices, already rising, have shot up further due to Russian blockades of our ports. Fertiliser prices have soared too. The UN has warned that — after rising more than 40% in just two years — global food prices could now surge another 22%, with the number of undernourished people worldwide increasing by up to 13 million as a result. Africa, as ever, is likely to suffer the worst.
Sparking famine in Africa is now a real threat, with farmers unable to plant their crops for the next harvest and food prices quickly rising. South Africa alone imports 30% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, making the country particularly vulnerable to commodities prices and shortages. Africa is no stranger to the devastating impact of famine, and the ongoing war in Ukraine only threatens to worsen cases of malnutrition, hunger, disease, and ultimately death.
To avert this food crisis in Africa and around the world, we need unshakeable international consensus — to keep up sanctions against Russia and escalating them, to force a retreat. That unified action should be aimed squarely at a single target. For this humanitarian crisis is not the result of crop failures, famines, or natural disasters. It can only be ended by stopping Putin.
Stopping his unprovoked invasion of my free country should also strike every liberal nerve for South Africans. When, 30 years ago, after a centuries-long struggle, Ukraine finally became an independent nation, the joy we felt was something that few other than South Africans can appreciate. We put the suffering of the USSR era – the privations, the starvations, the persecutions – behind us. In our new, diverse nation we celebrated the return of the Jewish people and Muslim Tartars who had been forcibly deported by the Soviets and set about building our own, free country.
But nothing angers an autocrat like a successful liberal democracy on his borders. And wounded by the loss of Russia’s global power, managing years of stagnant economic growth, Putin has long desired to resurrect the legacy of the Russian Empire. He has been tactically going about it for years, piece by piece — Chechnya, South Ossetia, Donbas, Crimea – swelling his territory by absorbing surrounding regions, then subsuming them to his control. And now, by brutal force, he has gone after the master prize: the full annexation of my beloved homeland.
As we all must come together urgently to protect the lives of innocent Ukrainians; we must also consider the shocking impact beyond its national border.
I urge South Africa’s leaders to join the global consensus of democratic nations in opposing Putin’s senseless and brutal takeover of my country. By doing so, they will stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, while protecting South Africans from potentially devastating consequences at home.