Zimbabwean News You Can Trust.
South Africa and its neighbours were at the centre of a tussle for influence this week when top Russian and U.S. officials visited, offering a rare moment of leverage for governments on a continent more used to being buffeted by events than wooed.
With a war in Europe pitting invading Russian forces against Ukraine’s army supplied with Western arms, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen were both on the hunt for broader international support.
For the countries of southern Africa, which maintain strong ideological and historical sympathies for Russia, but hold far more significant trade balances with the European Union and United States, that rivalry presents an opportunity.
“They have the opportunity to play one side off against the other to get concessions; to get more aid, more trade,” said Steven Gruzd from the South African Institute of International Affairs. “That’s precisely what we’re seeing at the moment.”
The war in Ukraine has intensified long-standing great power competition for access to Africa’s abundant natural resources, and the diplomatic prize of its 54 U.N. votes.
But Africa’s voting patterns at the United Nations show a continent divided over which side to support in Ukraine’s war.
Landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique, and with a gross domestic product of less than $5 billion, the tiny kingdom of Eswatini doesn’t often command the attention of world powers.
No Russian diplomat is based there.
Nevertheless Lavrov made a stopover after visiting South Africa, which his counterpart Thulisile Dladla described as a “profound honour.” The two sides signed a visa waver agreement.
Eswatini relies on the United States for aid, but its absolute monarchy has suffered U.S. criticism on human rights.
Source Reuters