Here are a couple of articles that appeared on local news site IOL (Independent (ha!) OnLine) today. While the rest of the world shuns Russia and their dodgy “news” sources, we are seemingly welcoming them with open arms. Sputnik (not this one) is now banned from spilling their propaganda vomit across the EU, but here’s their uninvited and surely unbiased take on China’s reaction to sanctions against Russia, in the local rag:
IOL is part owned by Chinese State Television, by the way. Which at least goes some way to explaining their strange fascination with telling bemused and uninterested South Africans about… well… all (wonderful) things Chinese State Television:
And as if that content wasn’t bad enough, here’s a wonderful puff piece about Russia’s 30 year love affair with South Africa, penned from the wholly impartial
Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of South Africa
And shared today, which is conveniently the 30th anniversary of the resumption of diplomatic relations between the countries (the National Party weren’t big fans, see?).
It chats about how great Russia has been to SA in all those years, and goes on in some detail to remind us all of the support it offered to the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations during the pre-1994 years. However, if they are wanting to use this as some sort of emotional leverage (what? no. surely not!), then we’d all do well to remember that during those years, Russia was part of the USSR in very much the same way the Ukraine was. And so I’m not sure why we should now choose to be celebrating and supporting one, while it invades and bombs the other.
SA’s response to the invasion of Ukraine was initially rather wishy-washy, as mentioned here, but then suddenly DIRCO kicked in and had a bit of a pop at Vlad’s actions:
Cyril (and presumably Vladimir) was reportedly somewhat unhappy with that though, and so then there was this:
The trouble (or rather the t-Ruble – see what I did there?) is, being such good mates with Russia, we do seem to have an awful lot of money tied up with them in one way or another, which makes it politically awkward for us to try to admonish them. But we don’t want to end up being one of those countries that tacitly supports their actions, like Nicaragua, Venezuela or – God help us – Belarus. Because that would be a very unpleasant situation to be in.
SA has been excommunicated by the rest of the world before – with good reason.
Let’s not experience it again for a bad one.