The following is the editorial featured in our June – August 2023 uManyano lwaBasebenzi publication
President Cyril Ramaphosa has returned from a mission to Ukraine and Russia, as part of five African countries intervening between Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladmir Putin’s regimes for a resolution on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The diplomatic mission is a desperate attempt to cover up ANC’s thinly veiled support for Putin’s invasion, to shore up its waning favours from the US and Western Imperialism in the interests of SA’s big monopolies, which depend on them for their exports.
The war in Ukraine has graphically highlighted the fundamental changes in world geopolitics which have been in the making for decades now. It has brought into focus the end of the unipolar US-dominated world order, and the acceleration and consolidation of the geopolitical realignment that has polarised the world into two major blocs. The intensifying inter-imperialist conflict has given African governments space to manoeuvre for the first time in decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The new scramble for Africa, however, has also laid bare the neocolonial status of these states. The incapacity of the African governments, including the ANC government, to chart any meaningful policy position in the interests of its people, independent of big multinational corporations monopolising key industries in their countries, and the imperialist states behind them, clearly illustrate this.
The ongoing Russian imperialist war has cost hundreds of thousands of military and civil casualties, displaced millions and caused terrible hardships for tens of millions more people in Ukraine. Sanctions against Russia have hammered the working class there, and increased need for more soldiers to send across the border creates a dangerous situation for all Russians. The attempted coup on June 24th by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary group Wagner that Putin has hired, has further revealed Putin’s weaknesses. There is no end in sight. If anything, parties are digging their heels in and settling for a protracted war of attrition.
The war has also accelerated and widened polarisation of the world into two consolidating imperialist blocs: the US-Western European bloc, and the China-BRICS bloc. For these blocs, the Ukraine war is a measure of their geopolitical power and they want to pursue it to decisive victory. Western Imperialism is just as much responsible for provocation and incitement of the war as the Russian Imperialism that is trying to keep Ukraine and Eastern Europe subjugated in the interests of its big corporations.
Just as the war in Ukraine is about an inter-imperialist power struggle for markets and spheres of influence, the growing tensions also take place within the context of the new scramble for Africa. In this struggle, the old Western Imperialist powers are fighting to reassert their neo colonial domination of the continent against China, Russia and other regional powers challenging their monopoly over the African minerals, labour and markets.
As the struggle intensifies, many African governments have been cajoled, blackmailed and threatened into one camp or another – even more so with South Africa. The ANC government is officially pursuing a policy of neutrality. This policy is not only devoid of principles, but nobody buys into it.
The refusal of the Polish authorities to grant the security detail of President Cyril Ramaphosa the permission to disembark from their plane at Warsaw to guard him during his peace mission in Kiev and St Petersburg, is just another humiliating revelation that nobody buys into their official position of neutrality – not Ukraine and its Western Allies, nor the ANC’s own allies in BRICS. By this position, ANC is trying to manoeuvre between the two imperialist blocs, attempting to gain favours for itself and balance the bosses’ interests from both sides. Unfortunately, this position has not won favour with any of these blocs. Putin’s insistence on attending the BRICS Summit despite the pleadings of SA Government, which is under obligation to arrest him if he enters the country due to International Criminal Court’s warrant of arrest, is upsetting their precarious balancing act and forcing decisions on foreign policy and legal questions they would rather avoid.
On the other hand, increasing US sanctions places the ANC government under immense pressure to reevaluate its position in relation to Russia. These include targeted sanctions against its Aviation school and threat of removing the country from African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a US trade scheme that allows duty free imports of certain products from qualifying African countries.
Although US imperialism is certainly overplaying its hands, the pressure is finding resonance with the corporate and rightwing political elite in SA. The corporate interests in the agriculture, manufacturing , and mining sectors don’t want to risk their favourable access to vital markets in the US and Europe. Although China is certainly important, being the biggest trading partner, risking relations with the West for Russia is not worth it.
Only working-class internationalism and socialism are a viable alternative to unprincipled, pro-imperialist manoeuvres.
Although, working class people are certainly affected by the blackmail and threat of sanctions from the West, understandably fearing for the jobs, and services dependent on western aid, including life-saving American aid to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic, there is nonetheless an overwhelming anti-western imperialism sentiment that the US and their allies underestimate. Masses of black people are resentful of the Western Imperialism’s legacy of brutal colonialism, repression of independent progressive movements across the continent and collaboration with the Apartheid regime.
Over a century of crushing domination and ruthless exploitation under racist western monopolies means many black working class and young people see in the challenge of BRICS a possibility of the alternative world order free of Western imperialist domination.
Neither Russia nor China are countries where workers have control of the state, and neither are striving towards becoming socialist. These are capitalist regimes exploiting their own working class at home and pursuing an imperialist policy to extract profits from exploitation of African labour, lands and its mineral resources, just like Western Imperialism.
For as long as the economy is monopolised by privately owned and profiteering monopolies, South Africa would be subordinated to corporate interests, which find political expression in the imperialist states to which they belong. The only alternative to this is for the working class to seize these monopolies into public ownership and to build an economy working in the interests of many, not few. For this the working class needs a revolution and mass revolutionary party to lead it, and it must spread internationally. Based on struggle, working class solidarity and co-operation with revolutionary mass movements of the working class across the world, it would be possible for a workers’ government in South Africa to pursue a genuinely principled, revolutionary foreign policy of supporting struggles against imperialism, its wars and oppressions.
