JOHANNESBURG—When officials from South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) return from missions to foreign countries, there’s usually great fanfare, with press conferences at which officials are keen to take credit for political and economic gains.
That wasn’t the case when President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special envoys to the United States returned from Washington last week. In fact, the delegation, led by the ANC leader’s security adviser, Sydney Mufamadi, slipped quietly into Johannesburg without a word.
The team had been on a mission to convince U.S. lawmakers not to push to limit trade ties with South Africa because of the ANC’s increasingly close “friendship” with the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
They had specifically sought assurances that the Biden administration wouldn’t freeze South Africa out of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a U.S. government initiative that allows products from certain African countries, including South Africa, duty and quota-free access to lucrative American markets.
According to South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry, there was $21 billion in two-way trade between the United States and South Africa in 2021.
Many local journalists and citizens were left scratching their heads at the silence of Mufamadi, and the government as a whole, given the possible ramifications of the loss of trade with the United States for an economy brought to its knees by decades of ANC corruption and mismanagement.
A possible reason for the tight lips has emerged.
At almost exactly the same time as the ANC delegation was meeting with members of Congress in Washington, telling them the Ramaphosa administration’s relationship with Russia was “just normal diplomacy,” Pretoria was secretly allowing a Russian cargo aircraft whose owner was under sanctions by the United States to land at a military base near South Africa’s capital.
An aviation expert told The Epoch Times the flight of the Ilyushin II-76 into and out of Waterkloof base wasn’t recorded on commercial aircraft tracking systems, as its radar identification system had been switched off.
Additionally, Aviacon Zitotrans has shipped military equipment such as rockets, warheads, and helicopter parts all over the world,” including to Russian forces in Ukraine.
“The plane was delivering diplomatic mail for dispatch to the Russian Embassy in Pretoria,” Brig. Gen. Andries Mahapa, a South African Defense Force spokesperson, told The Epoch Times.
“This aircraft was carrying nothing sinister,” Clayson Monyela, a spokesperson for South Africa’s Department of International Relations, told The Epoch Times. He declined to elaborate on why the government had allowed a sanctioned plane to land.
It didn’t take long for news of the plane’s touchdown on South African soil to reach U.S. lawmakers.
Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was the first to react to the aircraft’s visit.
“The United States should start taking action to respond to these direct threats to our sovereign interests.”
“So there our guys are, telling the Americans we’re neutral and basically we have to keep close to Putin because we are partners in BRICS and we want to try to play a role in bringing peace in Ukraine," a South African government official who was involved in planning what he called the “trade rescue mission” to Washington told The Epoch Times.
BRICS is a bloc of leading developing world economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
“And then, we hear this plane has landed in Pretoria and it is a sanctioned Russian plane that has in the past been used to carry weapons.
“It was deeply embarrassing and it has undermined everything we wanted to achieve,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“It really messed us up, because some of the Americans were throwing it in our faces and we did not have a leg to stand on.”
South Africa also has deep historical ties with Moscow, with the former Soviet Union having supported the ANC’s armed struggle against apartheid with weapons and money.
The ANC government has been riling the Western alliance against Russia since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It refused to condemn Moscow’s aggression and has repeatedly described Putin and the Russian government as “South Africa’s great friends.”
In December 2022, it allowed the U.S.-sanctioned Russian cargo ship Lady R to dock at the Simon’s Town naval base near Cape Town and refused to explain why the vessel was there.
In February, The New York Times cited an anonymous U.S. official as saying that the Biden administration believed that “munitions and rocket propellant that Russia could use in the Ukraine war” may have been loaded onto the ship.
The South African government described the allegations as “false.”
ANC officials have also been making regular visits to Moscow at Putin’s invitation.
Last year, Defense Minister Thandi Modise was a guest speaker at a “security conference” in the Russian capital.
In February, the navies of China, Russia, and South Africa participated in a “joint military exercise” off South Africa’s east coast, after Pretoria had declined to take part in U.S.-led drills held in various parts of Africa.
The Ramaphosa administration also has made it clear that Putin is “welcome” to attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in early August, even as the International Criminal Court issued a war crimes warrant for the Russian leader’s arrest.
“South Africa is clearly part of a Chinese-led effort to counterbalance Western support for Ukraine, and that’s what they couldn’t hide from the members of Congress in D.C.,” said John Steenhuisen, the leader of South Africa’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance.
“Like China, the Ramaphosa administration doesn’t provide lethal aid to Putin, but they help that maniac’s war effort nonetheless, by, for example, allowing Russian warships and sanctioned vessels safe passage,” he told The Epoch Times.
“How this is in the interests of peace is beyond reasonable thinking.”
Steenhuisen said the South African government appears to be doing its best to “prove that it is an implacable ally” to Moscow, rather than a “neutral onlooker.”
In comments to The New York Times, Risch seemed to agree.
“The South African people remain important partners of the United States, but we can no longer accept its government’s continued hostile acts against U.S. sovereign interests and must respond appropriately.”
South Africa faces a “real risk of being expelled from its single most important trade treaty—AGOA, all because the ANC wants to bend to the will of a Kremlin warmonger and protect the donations that are being channeled to the ANC by Russian oligarchs,” said Emma-Louise Powell, the Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson on foreign relations.
The ANC dismissed her claim as “stupid, desperate, and baseless.”
However, it seems as if the South African government’s special visit to Washington has backfired, sparking calls from U.S. lawmakers for South Africa’s scheduled hosting of the AGOA forum in November to be scrapped.
“This could be the first step toward us being excluded from AGOA,” South African independent economist Iraj Abedian said.
“Excuse the wordplay here, but we just cannot expect to get away with playing non-stop Russian roulette. Sooner or later, the hammer is going to fall on the bullet that the ANC keeps on loading into the chamber.”
