SIPHAMANDLA ZONDI
The detention of the plane carrying extra security for President Cyril Ramaphosa on his trip to join the African peace mission in Ukraine and Russia has caused an uproar beyond proportion.
For more than a day, the security detail, alongside journalists and some other state officials, were grounded at the airport in the Polish capital, Warsaw, in a manner very telling about the geopolitical times we are living in today.
Warsaw is the city after which the military alliance led by the Soviet Union in the battle for dominance with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) alliance was named.
The Warsaw Pact, signed in 1955, led to the formation of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, whose key members were the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and the German Democratic Republic.
They pledged to come to each other's defence should they be attacked by other countries. They had Nato in mind, which had welcomed West Germany into its fold. The Warsaw structure dissolved in 1991 as the Soviet Union also dissolved, marking the end of the Cold War as we knew it.
But Nato did not dissolve despite claiming victory in the Cold War, and it is now being used to arm Ukraine in the war that followed the Russian invasion in February 2022.
It had been used to bring the former Soviet Union republics firmly into the Western bloc that did not cease to exist with the end of the Cold War. It became part of the project also to checkmate Russia in the 1990s and encircle it as it would not completely surrender and fully join the Western alliance.
This would also thus help create conditions that led to the war in Ukraine in at least two ways. The first was to signal to Russia that it was being encircled, causing Russia to arm itself, assert itself and become nationalistic, as well as to grow its ambitions to become a major global power.
Secondly, it actively expanded fast towards the eastern border of Russia, taking missile systems and training militaries in the vicinity of Russia. Whether Russia was reasonable to sense danger or not will be debated for decades to come. The fact is that it sensed a danger and communicated its insecurities, including to Nato.
It was to deal with these issues that the parties established a Nato-Russia Council. Yet, Nato continued to move close to Russia, and Russia continued to intensify its defence posture.
We now virtually have a Cold War II. US-led Nato inclusive Western bloc positions itself in support of Ukraine and for Russia's defeat. Russia and China have now become this alliance's sworn enemy, and the world is divided on this matter.
But unlike the first Cold War, in this case, the West does not have an alliance of countries they are fighting back against, but only two countries, Russia and China. There is a large number of countries taking a non-aligned position.
This is not a neutral position, as some mistakenly call it, for these countries are not neutral about the fact that Russia violated the principle of territorial integrity in its military operation and conducted an invasion.
They are also not neutral since they oppose the arming of Ukraine and unilateral sanctions measures taken because they affect all and sundry without a United Nations mandate. They are in favour of a peaceful settlement of this conflict, a principle of the UN Charter too.
There is immense pressure and blackmail to force countries to join the counter-invasion side and support a military solution and unilateral sanctions. This takes the form of a flurry of visits to developing countries, a rush to sign some economic deals and such with them to entice into the Nato bloc.
Russia, too, has sought to cosy up with the non-aligned countries to build itself some support. A lot is at stake in this, and the powerful have little patience with small countries trumpeting peace as the best option for ending the war. The US Congress has signalled its intention to impose punishment on African countries that remain independent in their foreign policy.
The refusal to allow the plane to fly over Italy and its detention in Warsaw has all the hallmarks of a Cold War posture. Through this, Poland is making it clear to South Africa that they would not let Africans have their way with this option of peaceful settlement via negotiations when Poland has fully committed itself and its resources to the military solution. So, we are seeing a rivalry between those who favour military victory versus those advocating a negotiated settlement.
The creation of this sideshow in Warsaw was assisted by the woeful failure of the South African government to communicate what was happening in Warsaw, waiting many days after the fact before holding a press conference that did not clarify much.
South Africa knows how to take strategically strong foreign policy positions on difficult matters, but it is not effective in communicating around it. The committee approach of the government leads to a long process of internal consultation, thus leaving a lacuna filled by all manner of actors with lies, distortions and innuendos.
The Nato and Russian sides will continue to signal to South Africa their interests, and this will require the country to be more nimble, sharper in its communication and more candid in its engagement with the public.
Professor Siphamandla Zondi is the Director of the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation.
Daily News