Thy will be done: Vladimir Putin at an Easter Orthodox service. (Getty Images)
With the US now accusing South Africa of providing arms and ammunition to Russia, we’ve officially been thrown into something comparable with the Cold War setting of the middle to late 20th century.
Many African nations that gained their independence after World War II were thrust into this world, where you were forced to decide if you were with the West or the communists in the East.
Communism may be its nadir, but there’s still a choice that will have to be made.
For most African nations in the latter part of the 20th century, this gamesmanship was not beneficial. In the worst case scenario, proxy wars were fought on the ground as governments and rebel movements were funded by either one of the two opposing worlds.
Congo lost a revolutionary hero and its first democratically elected president in Patrice Lumumba to this war for influence over the richest piece of earth. It found itself with a murderous regime of Western-backed dictator in Mobutu Sese Seko. Our close neighbours in Angola and Mozambique were torn apart in their respective wars during the Cold War era.
Our delayed freedom, coming 37 years after Ghana’s independence, was also a result of the Cold War as the West, or should I say the conservatives, for much of the 20th century, supported Apartheid South Africa. Margaret Thatcher once described the ANC as a “typical terrorist organisation,” while Ronald Reagan condemned terrorist and communist elements within the party.
When freedom was eventually won, South Africa walked back onto a global stage where the Cold War was supposedly over. Capitalism and democratic norms had won the moral argument. China had embraced the former, while Russia, on the surface at least, embraced both.
In practice, it meant that this new black majority-led government in Africa wouldn’t merely be a pawn fought over between Washington and Moscow, and instead would have some sovereignty (as long as it played by the rules of the free market and not going after long entrenched interests) to start charting its course.
The administrations of Nelson Mandela and especially Thabo Mbeki, were very strong on foreign affairs. The less said about those that have followed, the better.
What allowed this space was that the argument over capitalism and communism was over. In the early 90s it was so settled that American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, wrote the 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. In it, he argued that with the ascendancy of the West and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, humanity had reached “…not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such”.
How wrong he has proved to be.
The West (the baby boomer generation at least) has rejected globalisation through decisions such as Brexit and the continued relevance of former US president, Donald Trump. While embracing capitalism, China has shunned democratic norms and Xi Jinping is set to be that country’s longest serving leader since Chairman Mao.
Russia has Vladimir Putin, who by starting a war with Ukraine as far back as 2014, reignited the tensions and distrust of old.
It looks like we are back to a bipolar world – a world in which this now dysfunctional ANC has never governed. The choice for men such as ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, is between the US led West and the East that is economically and politically led by China, but with Russia demanding a starring role. Not a very comforting prospect.
South Africa, as one of the most industrialised emerging market nations and with its highly liquid currency in the rand, will be increasingly pushed to take a stand. The weakness of the rand this week is testament to this.
Its decline – and if sustained – will only add further pressure to us as consumers, while exporters will smile in the short term as their goods are priced in dollars. Over the medium and longer term, miners and our other exporters will feel the pinch of a weak currency as the cost of machinery that they import will keep on climbing.
An under pressure economy, as we know, has been fuelling discontent across the breadth of this country. If the screws are tightened further with the introduction of sanctions and other punitive measures, the temperatures just keep ratcheting higher.
This pressure will only get worse in the weeks and months to come as we await the arrival of the Russian Tsar. Our sovereignty will be tested.
We are now in the middle of a new Cold War, it’s a frightening prospect given our interests across both worlds.