In South Africa, Russia’s ‘anti-colonial’ narrative sways public opinion

The African National Congress (ANC) recruited Sue Dobson, a young white woman from Pretoria, as a spy within the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1986.

She was transported to Moscow for specialist training as part of her mission.

Dobson, who is now retired and resides in England, described it as a very intensive training course. It covered strategies for being out and about, secret writing, photography, and how to pick up surveillance. In addition to the street exercises, I would have to spot six or eight people who were following me, whether they were on foot or by car, by tram or in a train carriage, or something similar. ”

Although she had little free time, she did manage to spend a few days in Leningrad, which is now known as St. Petersburg.

She recalls that 1986 had to have been a wintertime event because everything was covered in snow. It was truly stunning. ”

She was hired by the Bureau of Information, the apartheid regime’s propaganda wing, as a reporter the following year. She was given access to ministers and other well-known information as a result of the job. However, when the authorities learned about her family’s connections to the ANC, her cover suddenly vanished.

According to Dobson, whose memoir Burned: The Spy South Africa Never Caught is a slang expression for the intelligence department, I was told to stay where I was and that I would be taken back to Pretoria on a plane with someone from Foreign Affairs, which was a slang for the intelligence department.

I had to travel to Botswana, and the Soviet diplomats there assisted me and took me on a plane to the UK because the game was over. ”

Dobson claimed she had not the knowledge to make a comment on Russia’s most recent full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While Western powers have largely condemned the aggression against its neighbor, Africa has shown some unanticipated sympathy for the Kremlin.

In 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sparked the war, only half of African governments formally condemned Russia at the UN.

According to experts, this trend stems from Moscow’s long support of anti-imperialist causes.

Russia’s resistance to Western influence in Africa dates back to the 19th century. In the 1895-96 Italo-Ethiopian War, the Russian Empire provided weapons and other support for the Orthodox Christians who were plundering and dividing the continent during the Scramble for Africa.

However, Russian involvement has been greatly exaggerated, according to Oleksandr Polianichev, a historian of the Russian Empire in Ukraine.

Nikolai Leontiev, a Russian adventurer who arrived in Ethiopia in the early 1895s and buffed his way into Menelik II’s inner circle, is credited in large part with this narrative, according to Polianichev.

Leontiev lavishly described the crucial role he claimed to have played on the battlefield in his account of the Ethiopian resistance to Italy, claiming to be one of the decisive forces behind the Battle of Adwa victory. However, this was a self-serving  fiction . ”

Levittev is frequently credited with delivering a shipment of ammunition and weapons that helped Ethiopia withstand the Italian colonists.

According to Polianichev, the Russian government never delivered these weapons to Ethiopia in time, despite Leontiev’s request for the old Berdan rifles, which the Russian army was switching to the new Mosin rifles. The Italians detained the steamship, and the shipment didn’t arrive in Ethiopia until after the war was over. ”

Although Russia’s naval capabilities prevented Nikolai Ashinov, the leader of a band of Cossacks, from setting foot on Djibouti in 1889 and declaring it to be Russian territory, colonizing Africa for themselves was never a feasible idea. However, the French had already established a colony and quickly bombarded Ashinov’s settlement with warships.

Later, during the Cold War, the Soviets fought off Western-backed alliances in conflicts in Angola, Mozambique, and the Congo, but sometimes not successfully.

Under General Gamal Abdel Nasser, the USSR provided arms and infrastructure assistance to Egypt.

According to Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, an American historian of the USSR, “the Soviet Union had ideological and practical reasons to support anti-colonial movements and decolonization in the Global South.”

On the one hand, it was battling Western Europe and the United States to demonstrate that socialism was the ideal form of society and government. Following the end of the empire, socialist socialism was intended to serve as the blueprint for the establishment of new states’ economies and governments.

On the other hand, trade agreements helped the Soviet Union export goods to allies and provided the USSR with a range of natural resources imported at market rates from the Global South. Soviet infrastructure projects in Africa had the benefit of being reciprocally beneficial because the recipient state would receive a kind payment. ”

The Patrice Lumumba University, which is named in honor of the Congolese leader, was established in Moscow as part of its outreach to African countries. From the 1960s, about 500 scholarships were awarded to African students each year.

Some people, however, claimed to have been racist. A rare protest erupted in Red Square after Edmund Assare-Addo, a student from Ghana, was allegedly brutally murdered in 1963 due to an alleged interracial relationship.

According to St Julian-Varnon, “This was a glaring contradiction to Soviet propaganda in their home countries,” which portrayed the nation as the antithesis of European colonial powers.

The Soviet Union’s racism stories occasionally reached Western media and undermined Soviet attacks on American anti-Black racism. Despite the racism, African students in the Soviet Union and Russia continued to study because they saw the benefits of an education like this. ”

The Soviets have been supporting the ANC and its armed wing, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), since the 1960s, arming and training operatives like Sue Dobson, despite apartheid propaganda that depicted the USSR as savoring South Africa’s resources.

Dobson remarked, “I think the ANC would not forget the significance of the Soviet Union’s contribution to the ANC coming to power.”

It is something that is regarded and honored in my opinion.   Significant historical ties exist; going back to the very first ANC members; between the ANC and the USSR. who came to Moscow very early and read The Bolsheviks’ Book; regarding the liberation movement and revolution. ”

The government of South Africa is currently the ruling party of the ANC, and while maintaining a neutral stance, it may be a sign of lingering sympathies because many senior ANC members were educated or trained in the USSR, which Russia is regarded as the country’s replacement.

Russia’s anti-colonial narrative appeals, in essence.

At the local level, there is more outspoken pro-Russian support.

Counterprotesters in Durban who were waving Russian flags and playing the meme song Sigma Boy, a Russian pop hit, interrupted a small rally of South African Ukrainians in Durban in February.

Other locations on the continent are dotted with Russian flags.

In response to security concerns in nations like Mali and the Central African Republic, where local leaders have welcomed the support despite allegations of atrocities by Russian mercenaries, Moscow has forgiven the debts of several African nations and provided boots on the ground to address them.

According to historian Polianichev, the appeal of Russia’s “anti-colonial” narrative lies in its appeal to societies and ruling elites from throughout Eurasia and beyond, who are willing to accept or even embrace it as long as it aligns with their own political sensibilities.

Source: Aljazeera