African leaders on fool’s errand
African leaders say they’re on a mission to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia. Evidently, they think European leaders haven’t bothered to try.
But prevailing facts and circumstances make clear these Africans can only be on a fool’s errand.
An African delegation on a peace mission to Ukraine headed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was greeted with explosions and forced to shelter in bunkers amid air strikes on the capital Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials said the attack was repelled by air defenses as the leaders prepared to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Friday, as part of an effort to negotiate an end to Russia’s war on the country. The African leaders are expected to travel to Russia Saturday to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin.
(CNN, June 16, 2023)
They might be too foolish to see the error of their ways. But Russia seemed keen to help them see it. That would explain it greeting them so ballistically.
Putin’s contempt for African leaders
Those Russian airstrikes showed visceral contempt. But none of those African leaders should have been surprised. After all, Russia’s genocidal president, Vladimir Putin, has shown them even greater contempt.
He did so when a similar African delegation went to Russia a year ago this month. That mission was to get Putin to lift the blockade he imposed on Ukrainian grain exports.
Tankers were taking much of that grain to Africa, where millions were on the brink of starvation. But Putin was using their grain as a weapon of war. He was hurting innocent Africans far more than defiant Ukrainians. But he couldn’t care less.
He sent them back home empty-handed. But he filled their heads with his war propaganda. And he expected them to feed that to their starving people. “Putin Mocked Africans Begging Him to Lift Grain Blockade.” That’s the title of my blog post, decrying their ill-fated mission.
Of course, the contempt Putin showed on that occasion should have been enough. It should have disabused African leaders of any hope of getting Putin to do anything. That, especially given the way Putin rubbed salt in that humiliating wound.
Because mere weeks later, in July 2022, he struck a deal with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. He lifted his blockade. Then Erdogan rubbed that in their faces. At the UN General Assembly, he hailed his deal as the greatest accomplishment in global diplomacy in modern times.
Old Soviet ties that do not bind
African leaders wax lyrical about their ties to Russia. No doubt, the Soviet Union supported their liberation struggle. Communist ideology motivated Soviet leaders to fraternize with African leaders. However, that motivation dissipated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989.
Today, Russia’s interest in Africa is mercantile and mercenary. It rivals China’s interest in this respect. Both are only interested in extracting Africa’s precious mineral resources. The notorious Wagner Group betrays this in spades. It’s fomenting tribal warfare all over Africa to further Russia’s mercenary interests.
South Africa, the Pied Piper
Zelensky was the only bona fide statesman among the leaders in Kyiv yesterday. And it took all his skills to refrain from damning Ramaphosa as a veritable Trojan Horse.
After all, this is the same South African leader who hosted war games with Russia and its Axis patron China last January. And he’s the same South African leader the US accused of sending arms to Russia just last month.
Yet there he was, playing honest peace broker. Ramaphosa called on both sides to de-escalate violence to negotiate peace. But imagine Italy’s Benito Mussolini leading a delegation to Britain during the Blitz in 1940. How do you think Churchill would’ve reacted if he called for Britain and Germany to de-escalate violence to negotiate peace? Enough said?
Africa’s ill-fated quest for relevance
I appreciate the beatitude in these African leaders wanting to play the peacemakers. But there is nothing blessed about their mission. Optimism might have moved them. But opportunism is following them in the form of a dark cloud.
Again, every world leader, from Macron of France to Xi of China, has tried. That’s why every non-African world leader must be watching their fool’s errand with derision and indignation.
These African leaders are inserting themselves into an intractable situation. This, despite their inability to negotiate a deal to feed their own starving people. Frankly, iPINIONS thinks their mission would be laughable if it were not so deadly.
Indeed, they’d do well to focus on brokering peace in their own backyard. After all, the Geneva Academy reports that 35 wars are currently raging in Africa.
Yet African leaders are trying to upstage their former colonial masters in Europe. But they are only succeeding in making themselves look clueless and feckless in equal measure.
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