Decoding SA’s UN vote on Russia

No mention was made of the advancement of human rights internationally when President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the ANC’s January 8 statement on the occasion of the party’s 110th anniversary in Limpopo earlier this year.

"The ANC is committed to advance the cause of national liberation, development, world peace, disarmament and environmentally sustainable development," the statement read.

The party probably did not envisage that, just weeks later, one of the states SA considers a key ally would launch a "special military operation" in a neighbouring country, an action that poses one of the biggest threats to world peace in recent times.

In a UN General Assembly vote last week on a resolution on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, SA was among 35 countries that abstained, while 141 countries voted in favour of the resolution and five voted against.

In the DA’s view, this made a mockery of the government’s policy doctrine of "pursuing ubuntu diplomacy and protection of human rights" — a line of criticism also expressed by US and EU diplomats.

It seems SA may have taken this position to bolster the prospect of facilitating talks between the two parties. "I have called on Russia and … Ukraine to subject themselves to a mediated process which can lead to negotiation and finally an end to the hostilities," Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter on Monday.

He said SA had abstained from the vote because, among other reasons, the resolution’s wording didn’t articulate support for a mediated settlement clearly enough.

Mathu Joyini, SA’s ambassador to the UN, also said the resolution didn’t address "the security concerns of the parties" — a veiled reference to Russia’s unease about the eastwards expansion of Nato to include Ukraine.

ANC leaders have so far expressed three different views on the matter, which hasn’t helped the confusion about SA’s official position.

First, there was the statement by international relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor on February 25, which called for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

Ramaphosa, in a subsequent statement, didn’t go quite as far — though he did say in his newsletter this week that SA’s call for dialogue "does not render our commitment to human rights any less", highlighting the toll the conflict could take on civilians.

Russia is our friend through and through

—  Lindiwe Zulu

But ANC international relations & co-operation committee chair Lindiwe Zulu went further, telling The New York Times: "Russia is our friend through and through."

When canvassed by the FM, veteran ANC leaders and diplomats reflect a cross-section of these views, but few are willing to go on the record. Some say they stand by SA’s official statement at the UN and don’t want to contribute to the confusion; others tell the FM they would rather confine their battles at present to the renewal of the ANC.

All, however, agree that negotiation is vital.

Shirish Soni, a former ambassador to Kazakhstan, says a simple solution to the conflict — which he characterises as a war between Russia and Nato — would involve Ukrainians laying down arms.

"The Ukrainians are fighting Russians, backed by the US," he says. "As soon as parties come to the table and come to a negotiated settlement and dialogue, the war will stop. Dirco [the department of international relations & co-operation] is taking the correct stand and still has a very rich pool of extremely experienced diplomats who can steer Dirco in the right direction."

Still, he adds, SA’s significant domestic problems — including corruption, the burning down of parliament and the failure of security systems — might detract from the strength of its stance.

An ANC veteran with knowledge of SA’s negotiations ahead of the 1994 transition says the matter needs to be resolved with urgency, given the human cost of the conflict so far. The fact that there has been some dialogue between the governments of Ukraine and Russia is a good start, he says. But these talks have mostly revolved around creating humanitarian corridors, a process that hasn’t progressed smoothly thus far.

He says everyone else who has pronounced on the conflict, including Nato, the EU, the US and China, has their own interests in the outcome and so should remain out of the dialogue.

For meaningful negotiations to start, the two parties should "put an itemised list of their positions clearly on the table" and then select from that list the issues that are easier to resolve, such as the creation of humanitarian corridors, and start there. Only after that should the more controversial issues be tackled, he says. "Also, it will be more effective to call for a ceasefire rather than a withdrawal of troops — which might not happen — as a condition for negotiations."

There should also be a neutral facilitator to direct talks who is acceptable to both sides — say, for example, representatives from a country that abstained from voting on last week’s resolution.

"The task of the facilitator is to get the people to talk and sit at the table, and to get people to [stay] at the table when they want to walk out," the party veteran says.

Setting timelines could also help the talks move towards a settlement, he adds — for example, agreeing that Ukraine won’t join Nato for 30 years, in exchange for Moscow not pushing for the autonomy of the Donbas territories for an agreed time.

Most important is "to bring the solution and to take ownership for the consequences", he says. "That’s what lies at the heart of the outcome. Wherever in the world we have tried to impose a solution from the outside, the solution was not viable."

Among other veterans who have spoken out is former president Jacob Zuma. In a statement put out by his foundation, he said Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved to defend his country against what he perceives as a threat, in the same way countries such as the US would have.

In a rapid segue from the topic, Zuma went on to blame Western forces for his own removal from power and his arrest last year (for being in contempt of court), claiming Western countries are "using their forces that they are in control of within some structures of our government … and in the ruling party".

But he, too, says dialogue is the only way to go, concluding (in English and Russian): "Let there be peace between Russia and Ukraine."

UN VOTES: SA’s decision in context

SA’s abstention last week from the UN General Assembly vote on a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine might have come as a disappointment to some — but it wasn’t a surprise.

It was, after all, generally in line with the way that SA’s votes on rights issues at the UN have gone since the country rejoined the multilateral institution in 1994, says Suzanne Graham, author of Democratic SA’s Foreign Policy: Voting Behaviour in the UN.

In this time SA has voted most consistently on issues such as UN reform and the advancement of Africa’s interests. On rights issues, the country is “the least consistent”, says Graham.

While SA has voted consistently in favour of “thematic human rights resolutions” — protecting civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights in general — and for the right to development and the promotion of democracy, there’s been a less clear line on country-specific votes where other interests have been at play.

On Myanmar, for example, SA took “a kind of ping-pong position”, Graham says. During its first term as a nonpermanent Security Council member, SA voted with Russia and China against a 2007 resolution relating to Myanmar. The resolution would have called on that country’s government “to cease military attacks against civilians in ethnic minority regions and begin a substantive political dialogue that would lead to a genuine democratic transition”.

This was despite the statement by then deputy president Thabo Mbeki in 1994 that SA could be “counted on to adhere to the pursuit of important goals of international peace and security and [would be] committed to being a good citizen of the world”.

In Graham’s view, the Myanmar vote may have been an attempt by SA to show it “wanted to be taken seriously, and [was] very keen not to appear to be rubber-stamping other members’ [decisions]”.

Previous attempts by democratic SA to call out Nigeria’s human rights violations had, after all, been met with resistance, even ridicule, in Africa, as SA was perceived to be an extension of the West — and that stung.

SA also failed to use its public UN vote to take a position against human rights abuses in other cases — relating to Cuba, China, Belarus, Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe, among them — indicating a strategic move away from prioritising human rights to paying attention to competing interests, including massaging old friendships.

This sparked public criticism and some confusion, partly because SA’s stance wasn’t properly communicated, Graham says.

However, SA appeared to reverse its position on Myanmar in a General Assembly vote in 2018 and 2019, which suggested a return to a human rights-based foreign policy as the country celebrated Nelson Mandela’s centenary.

Also, with Cyril Ramaphosa taking over as SA president in 2018, the country would have “wanted to show a reconnect with morality and [a] move away from the corruption scandals, and [for] the world [to] see us in a different way”, Graham says.

Importantly, there have also been some significant human rights wins for SA at the UN — for example, when it rallied the Security Council in 2019 to adopt resolution 2493 on women, peace and security unanimously at a time when many delegations were challenging recommendations on human rights for women.