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The Politics of Anti-Imperial Nostalgia: South Africa's Response to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2024

Thom Loyd
Thom Loyd*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Anthropology, and Philosophy, Augusta University, Augusta, United States Email: thloyd@augusta.edu
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Abstract

When the UN General Assembly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces in March 2022, barely half of African states voted in favor. This lukewarm support contrasted with strong support for Ukraine elsewhere in the world. Among those abstaining from the vote was South Africa, a country with a long history of interaction with the post-Soviet space. This essay considers the interplay of historical remembering and forgetting that has contributed to the South African response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A longstanding commitment to non-alignment, the long shadow of the anti-colonial struggle, and the complicated legacy of the Soviet Union, its collapse, and who rightly carries its anti-apartheid mantle, have all played a role in shaping the South African response.

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Type
Critical Forum: Russia’s War Against Ukraine from the Perspective of the Global South
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 83 , Issue 1 , Spring 2024 , pp. 15 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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References

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3 The response by African states has been far from uniform and, while on a continental scale the response has been ambivalent, there have been African states that have been unequivocal in their support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Nevertheless, even Kenya, whose envoy to the UN Martin Kimani made headlines in February 2022 with his condemnation of Russia, has since welcomed Russian delegations and embraced a policy of “strategic ambiguity.” See Jeff Otieno, “Russia-Ukraine War: Why Kenya Is Now Playing Both Sides,” The Africa Report, June 12, 2023 at https://www.theafricareport.com/312267/russia-ukraine-war-why-kenya-is-now-playing-both-sides/ (accessed April 17, 2024).

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16 Quoted in H. J. Simons and R. E. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa 1850–1950 (Harmondsworth, 1969), 401–2.

17 For a useful discussion of the Soviet relationship with Black liberation, see Hakim Adi, “The Negro Question: The Communist International and Black Liberation in the Interwar Years,” in Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins, eds., From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution (Chapel Hill, 2009), 155–78.

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21 TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 24, spr. 5661, ark. 40–2, P. V. Kryvenʹ to TsK KPU, September 23, 1963. There is now an extensive literature on African students in the Soviet Union. For example, Constantin Katsakioris, “Burden or Allies? Third World Students and Internationalist Duty through Soviet Eyes,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 18, no. 3 (2017): 539–68; Riikkamari Johanna Muhonen, “‘Good Friends’ for the Soviet Union: The Peoples’ Friendship University in Soviet Educational Cooperation with the Developing World, 1960–1980,” (PhD diss., Central European University, 2022).

22 Kasrils, Armed and Dangerous, 82.

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27 Kamogelo Segone, “Ukraine Conflict Shows Africans Still Fighting for Their Basic Human Rights,” Daily Maverick, March 2, 2022 at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-03-02-ukraine-conflict-shows-africans-still-fighting-for-their-basic-human-rights/ (accessed March 31, 2024); Rashawn Ray, “The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Shows Racism Has No Boundaries,” Brookings Institution blog, March 3, 2022 at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2022/03/03/the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-shows-racism-has-no-boundaries/ (accessed March 31, 2024); Tobore Ovuorie, “Ukraine: African Students Face Russian Missiles and Racism,” Deutsche Welle, April 9, 2022 at https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-war-african-students-face-russian-missiles-and-racism/a-61356066 (accessed March 31, 2024).

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33 “RUDN vernuli imia Patrisa Lumumby,” TASS, March 23, 2023, at https://tass.ru/obschestvo/17352875 (accessed March 31, 2024). Friendship University was first renamed after Lumumba in 1961, a year after its foundation.

34 Mikhail Gorbachev, “Europe as a Common Home,” Speech to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, July 6, 1989 at https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/speech-mikhail-gorbachev-council-europe-strasbourg-europe-common-home (accessed March 31, 2024). On the post-Soviet republics’ differing relations with Europe, see Katherine E. Graney, Russia, the Former Soviet Republics, and Europe since 1989: Transformation and Tragedy (Oxford, 2019).

35 Hilary Lynd and Thom Loyd, “Histories of Color: Blackness and Africanness in the Soviet Union,” Slavic Review 81, no. 2 (Summer 2022): 394–417, here 405–406.

36 On the history of Russian Eurasianism and its imperial antecedents, see contributions in Mark Bassin, Sergey Glebov, and Marlene Laruelle, eds., Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh, 2015).

37 On Soviet and post-Soviet racisms, see Ian Law, Red Racisms: Racism in Communist and Post-Communist Contexts (Basingstoke, 2012); Nikolay Zakharov, Race and Racism in Russia (Basingstoke, 2015); Jeff Sahadeo, Voices from the Soviet Edge: Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow (Ithaca, 2019).

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39 DIRCO, “South African Government Calls for a Peaceful Resolution of the Escalating Conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine,” February 24, 2022 at https://dirco.gov.za/south-african-government-calls-for-a-peaceful-resolution-of-the-escalating-conflict-between-the-russian-federation-and-ukraine/ (accessed April 15, 2024); DIRCO, “President Ramaphosa and President Putin Discuss Black Sea Grain Initiative,” July 15, 2023 at https://dirco.gov.za/president-ramaphosa-and-president-putin-discuss-black-sea-grain-initiative/ (accessed April 17, 2024).

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44 Ramani, Russia in Africa, 62.

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47 Tim Cocks, “South Africa’s Ramaphosa Blames NATO for Russia’s War in Ukraine,” Reuters, March 18, 2022 at https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-ramaphosa-blames-nato-russias-war-ukraine-2022-03-17/ (accessed March 31, 2024); Joyini, “Explanation of Vote on the Humanitarian Resolution in Ukraine.”

48 Monyela, “Why is the Brenthurst Foundation Obsessed with Ukraine?”

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