There’s something alarming about how the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters have bought into the Russian president’s mythology.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spawned a billion tweets, the return of late-night doom-scrolling and a bucketful of bullshit. Not to be outdone by the likes of United States TV host and conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, South African generated garbage has begun to emerge at pace.
Three examples come to mind. The first was the statement from former president Jacob Zuma that he knew Russian President Vladimir Putin “to be a man of peace”. President Cyril Ramaphosa told parliament that Nato was to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but that South Africa “cannot condone the use of force and violation of international law”.
The second was the South African Communist Party (SACP) arguing — seemingly with a straight face — that all the negative Russia media reports were simply “Western propaganda”.
And the third was the rationale from the Economic Freedom Fighters’ Floyd Shivambu that the EFF supported the invasion on the grounds that Russia had supported the liberation struggle against apartheid. (Clearly he has no time to read up about what the Soviet Union was, or how Kyiv was home to any number of exiles during apartheid.)
What should we make of this?
The first two are simply lies. As the pioneering investigative journalist IF Stone once said, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” So perhaps we should not be surprised. The ANC and the SACP know that they are lying. We know it is a lie. And they know that we know it is a lie. The third is a little more difficult to fathom. Is it possible that Shivambu and the EFF have never heard of the Soviet Union? Surely not? If not, much like in the case of the lies of the ANC and SACP, we must assume Shivambu is lying.
So, if we assume they are all lying, what might the point of their lying be? The simplest answer is that South Africa is part of Brics with Russia, and that Putin is an ally. I am sure there is some truth in this. But of course, like most simple explanations it is probably more complicated than that.
A second possible explanation is the Trumpian analogy — that they are all simply Putin’s “useful idiots”. Undoubtedly Trump was, and is, Putin’s useful idiot, but I simply do not believe the same is true for the triumvirate above.
A third potential explanation is that of trade. I have heard it said that Russia is a major trading partner who we cannot afford to offend. This is as delusional as saying Putin is a peace-loving democrat. In 2021, South Africa trade with Russia totalled R16-billion while trade with Nato countries was more than R1.131-trillion. So, let us assign that to the dustbin.
I want to suggest that something far more insidious is happening. First, it is important to note that the lying has nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine and everything to do with the dictatorship of Putin and the model of corrupt authoritarianism he provides. An integral part of Putin’s totalitarianism rests, as most totalitarian societies do, on story, on a mythology that Putin has created about himself and his role in the resurrection of the Great Russian Empire and the “historical unity of Russians”. Of course, it is delusional and a pack of lies.
But is it possible that the ANC is trying, as part of its “renewal” to find a new story, a new mythology? The ANC was always going to struggle to move from a just and globally admired liberation movement to an everyday political party with all the daily indignities, contradictions that implies. The ANC and the SACP need a new narrative, a new story, a new mythology if you will. And Putin offers a glorious one.
Putin is an absolute master of the art of lying, and has shown us in his 22 years in power, how if you repeat a lie, in fact repeat many lies, day after day, week after week, month after month, then eventually people will no longer have any idea of what to believe. And the end result of all the lying is, as Masha Gessen has so eloquently described, that “people eventually stop thinking” altogether. I propose that the three-lying horsemen above are telling us about how much they would like to be leading/living in a South Africa like that.
Another Putin narrative is that of the “strong man” (in the mould of Trump, Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán), but one which he has further imbued with an aura of camp masculinity (remember him shirtless on that horse). Strong men create their own narrative, they do now cower in the face of facts, and empathy and care. It is no accident that all the lies described above were spoken by men. These are all patriarchal men floundering for relevance in a changed world, terrified that their imagined pre-ordained birth right as powerful men are being threatened by women, the media, and innumerable other pesky believers in the importance of facts.
Putin also has a messianic complex, seeing himself as the fourth expansionist “great leader” in a line that begins with Ivan the Terrible, leads to Peter the Great, continues to Stalin and ends with him. Zuma’s quote about the ANC ruling until the second coming may not be personally messianic but you get the analogy.
Finally, Putin is the Godfather of state capture. His personal wealth is estimated to be in the region of $100-billion and the wealth of the oligarchs he has enriched through his rape of Russia has been apparent for two decades. Is it any wonder that Putin is so beloved by our own state capturers? Of course, Zuma is a novice by comparison but, oh, what a teacher and support Putin has been.
So, what you may ask, might this portend for our future? I contend that when the ANC, the SACP and the EEF sprout their lies about the poison that is Putin, they are telling us something about the world they are wishing to inhabit. In a world where power is slipping (the ANC), where attempts to get power may have reached their zenith (the 10% party that is the EEF), together with the SACP, the party forever struggling for relevance in its own little political wilderness, they are giving us a clue about the kind of authoritarianism and control they wish to emulate. Right now, democracy serves their power. But what they are telling us is that if we fail to return them to power, they will seek out a different type of control. And an attractive option is the model provided by the toxic patriarchal strong men that pollute our world right now. They certainly have no time for the democratically elected charismatic, intellectual, and European facing President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. It is the paranoid bloody tyrant Putin that offers a way to hold onto, or alternatively, to seize a different kind of power.
We would do well to take these warnings seriously. If you are prepared to openly lie to support the bombing in Ukraine of maternity hospitals, the random use of thermobaric missiles to suck the air out of the lungs of civilians, and wantonly bomb and kill children, all in the name of an imperialistic myth, then just imagine what else you are prepared to lie about. The lies we are being told are our canary in the coal mine. If we are prepared to listen, to heed the warning, we might have time to strengthen our democracy, revitalise civil society and push back against these toxic men. To butcher a famous quote of Primo Levi: “Those who deny the tyranny and horror of Putin, would be ready to follow in his footsteps.” If we fail to heed this bloody canary, South Africa should be afraid. Very afraid.