Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Pretoria on Thursday for a meeting with his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa. While the visit was cut short when a Russian strike on Kyiv killed 12 people, prompting Zelensky to return to Ukraine, the meeting saw a notable shift in Pretoria's stance on the Russian invasion.
"I am cancelling part of the programme for this visit and will return to Ukraine immediately after the meeting with the president of South Africa," Zelensky wrote on social media, having arrived in the country a few hours earlier.
This meeting had been planned for earlier in April, but was postponed as talks on the war in Ukraine were held in London.
A few weeks prior, on 24 February, South Africa had for the first time voted for a United Nations resolution calling for an end to the war.
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Zelensky's visit to South Africa further underlined a shift in Pretoria's stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, which it initially refused to condemn, according to Priyal Singh, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.
"South Africa has been criticised previously for taking quite an ambiguous position in defining the conflict," he told French news agency AFP. "And I think the UN resolution basically set that straight. South Africa has recognised that it needs to take a much less ambiguous role and to robustly engage with all sides."
Shifting stance
Ramaphosa's party, the African National Congress (ANC) has historically had close ties with the Kremlin since it came to power in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela, after the fall of South Africa's apartheid regime.
The official line of the Soviet Union, until its dissolution in 1991, was to back the anti-apartheid movement, providing political, military and financial support to liberation movements, particularly the ANC.
More recently, relations between Russia and South Africa have raised eyebrows both at home and abroad. Ramaphosa's markedly neutral stance on the war has been strongly criticised by the Democratic Alliance party, which entered a coalition in parliament with the ANC after last year's election and is a staunch supporter of Ukraine.
In further evidence of a shift in his stance, Ramaphosa said during the short visit by Zelensky on Thursday that peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow should start without preconditions, such as Ukraine ceding land to Russia.
The visit is a "continuation of our efforts to try to bring about a peaceful resolution," Vincent Magwenya, Ramaphosa's spokesman, said last month. "This is the position that South Africa has held from the beginning of that conflict."
Ahead of the visit, Zelensky posted on social media that it was "crucial to bring a just peace closer".
European rapprochement
Ramaphosa first invited the Ukrainian leader to meet with him in South Africa in February, as United States President Donald Trump cut humanitarian aid to South Africa and military support to Kyiv.
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Since then, South Africa has moved closer to Europe. During the eighth EU-South Africa summit held in mid-March, a new agreement to promote bilateral trade was signed, reinforcing the EU-South Africa Strategic Partnership.
"South Africa is certainly trying to find common ground with its European partners; it recognises their importance," Singh told AFP.
The shift has been noted too by Europe. Deputy head of the EU mission in South Africa, Fulgencio Garrido Ruiz, recently said that "South Africa has an increasingly positive role" in multilateral discussions.
Of Zelensky's visit, he said: "This is a positive step in multilateral efforts to achieve an inclusive, sustainable and comprehensive peace."
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However, Ramaphosa spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, ahead of his meeting with Zelensky, to "affirm the strong bilateral relations" – according to a South African government statement.
"South Africa will continue engaging all interested and affected parties, including the government of Ukraine, on finding a path to peace," it said.
Ukraine's interests in Africa
Kyiv has also shown interest in growing its international standing, and its footprint on the African continent.
According to the EU's Garrido Ruiz, Ukraine needs to make more diplomatic effort in Africa in the face of Russia's "very aggressive communication strategy" on the continent.
For its part, Ukraine is hoping to hear Pretoria's unequivocal condemnation of the war, Ukrainian ambassador Liubov Abravitova to South Africa told the country's Sunday Times newspaper.
"We are in a war for survival and the only way to stop it is to condemn the violation of international law," she said, "and to stand in support of the territorial integrity of countries."
(with AFP)
