Third time lucky? Establishing diplomatic relations between Russia and South Africa

Abstract

Diplomatic relations between Russia and South Africa were established in 1992, before South Africa's transition to democracy was completed. This move was perceived as a betrayal by many in both countries and beyond. For many decades the Soviet Union supported the African National Congress in its fight against the apartheid regime. South Africa's National Party government, in its turn, presented the USSR as the main force behind the ‘total onslaught’ – an all-out war purportedly waged against South Africa by international communism. Yet it was with the National Party government that the Russians established diplomatic relations. This article looks into the reasons for this change of heart in Moscow and Pretoria, discusses the political forces behind the decision to establish diplomatic relations, and analyses the process that led to this event and the results of establishing diplomatic relations the way it happened and at the time it happened for both countries.

Keywords:

• Russia
• Soviet Union
• South Africa
• African National Congress
• National Party
• Broederbond
• Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• Soviet State Committee for State Security (KGB)
• South African National Intelligence Service (NIS)

Notes on contributor

Irina Filatova is a Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia and Professor Emeritus of the University of KwaZulu–Natal in South Africa. She specialises in African history, the history of ties between Russia and South Africa, the history of the communist movement in South Africa, and the problems of race and ethnicity. She has authored dozens of articles, edited publications (among which a two-volume The Communist International and South Africa: A Documentary History, is the most important) and six books on these subjects. In 2014 her last book, The Hidden Thread: Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era (2013, co-authored with Apollon Davidson) was awarded the Recht Malan prize as the best non-fiction book of the year.

Notes

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4. Soviet security organisation.

5. OA Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of our Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 381.

6. Hansard, 1981, 91, cols 229–231.

7. Personal interview, Viacheslav Shiriaiev, former head of the group of Soviet advisers to Umkhonto we Sizwe in Angola (1979–1983), Moscow, 9 September 2004.

8. [Shiriaiev VF], Vospominaniia starshego gruppy sovetskikh voiennykh spetsialistov pri ANK (Memoirs of the Head of the Group of Soviet Military Specialists with the ANC), manuscript, 2 April 2003, p. 1; Shiriaiev VF. ‘“Tovarishch Ivan”. Vospominaniia Viacheslava Fiodorovicha Shiriaieva, kapitana pervogo ranga v otstavke’ (‘“Comrade Ivan”. Memoirs by Viacheslav Fiodorovich Shiriaiev, Captain First Rank, Retired’), in Tokarev AA & GV Shubin (eds), Vospominaniia neposredstvennykh uchastnikov i ochevidtsev grazhdanskoi voiny v Angole. Ustnaia istoriia zabytykh voin (Memoirs by Participants and Witnesses of the Civil War in Angola. Oral History of the Forgotten Wars). Moscow: Memories, 2009, p. 87.

9. Sinitsyn SYa, ‘“Venskii vals” s burami’ (“‘Vienna Waltz” with the Boers'), in Africa v vospominaniiakh veteranov diplomaticheskoi sluzhby (Africa in the Memoirs of Veterans of Diplomatic Service). Moscow: Publishing House 21st Century–Accord, 2000, p. 177.

10. Mikhail Gorbachev, who became General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985, proclaimed a new policy of ‘perestroika' (reconstruction) which was meant to modernise Soviet society and economy.

11. Sparks A, Tomorrow is Another Country. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 1995, pp. 55, 57.

12. Personal interview, Y, a top NIS official, Stellenbosch 16 April 2010. The interlocutor did not want his identity to be disclosed.

13. Ibid.

14. Hansard, 1988, 4, cols 9932–9935.

15. Nel P, Perceptions, Images and Stereotypes in Soviet-South African Relations – A Cognitive-Interpretative Perspective. Annale, 1992/4. Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch, n.d.,  pp. 24, 25. See also: Adamishin A, Beloie solntse Angoly (White Sun of Angola). Moscow: Vagrius, 2001, p. 108; Sparks A, Tomorrow is Another Country. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 1995, p. 363.

16. Davenport TRH & C Saunders. South Africa – A Modern History. London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 536–537.

17. Hansard, 1988, 4, col. 9722.

18. Hansard, 1989, 11, cols 7342–7343; 7338–7341.

19. Morris M, ‘Malan sees “new order” in world’, The Argus, 21 April 1989 .

20. Personal interview, Niel Barnard, former head of the NIS, part 2, Cape Town, 23 February 2012.

21. Van Zyl Slabbert F, The Other Side of History. An Anecdotal Reflection on Political Transition in South Africa. Johannesburg : Jonathan Ball, 2006, pp. 16, 21.

22. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, p. 349.

23. Coker C, ‘Soviet Bloc Economic Interests in Southern Africa’, Soviet Review, March–April, 1988, pp. 9, 10; Department of Foreign Affairs Archives, 1/50/3, vol. 3; Vanneman P, Soviet Strategy in Southern Africa. Gorbachev's Pragmatic Approach. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990, p. 98.

24. Ibid.

25. Personal interview, Niel Barnard, part 1, Cape Town, 9 February 2012.

26. Personal interview, Y.

27. Personal conversation, Kirill Karpovich, Moscow, 21 May 2010.

28. Sinitsyn SYa, ‘“Venskii vals” s burami’ (“‘Vienna Waltz” with the Boers'), in Africa v vospominaniiakh veteranov diplomaticheskoi sluzhby (Africa in the Memoirs of Veterans of Diplomatic Service). Moscow: Publishing House 21st Century–Accord, 2000,  pp. 175–6, 184.

29. Ibid., pp. 184–191.

30. South West Africa People's Organisation.

31. Personal conversation, Alexander Gogitidze, former Soviet and Russian diplomat, Moscow, 25 May 2002.

32. Viacheslav Artiomov and Vladimir Ivanov. First names identified by Kirill Karpovich.

33. Personal interview, Niel Barnard, part 1.

34. Personal interview, Y.

35. Nel P, Perceptions, Images and Stereotypes in Soviet-South African Relations – A Cognitive-Interpretative Perspective. Annale, 1992/4. Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch, n.d., p. 24.

36. Personal interview, Niel Barnard, part 1.

37. Personal interview, Y.

38. Personal interview, Niel Barnard, parts 1, 2.

39. Shubin V, ANC. A View from Moscow. Cape Town: Mayibuye Books – UWC, 1999, p. 295.

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41. Tetekin VN, Afrikanist (Africanist). Moscow: ETO Print Printers, 2011, p. 205.

42. Soviet Afro–Asian Solidarity Committee – formally a non-governmental organisation which maintained relations with liberation movements. It was closely connected with the CPSU's Central Committee.

43. Tetekin VN, Afrikanist (Africanist). Moscow: ETO Print Printers, 2011, pp. 200, 208–9.

44. Otchet ob uchastii delegatsii SKSSAA vo vstreche predstavitelej sovetskoj obshchestvennosti, beloj obshchiny YuAR, kriticheski otnosiashchikhsia k aparteidu, i Afrikanskogo natsionalnogo congressa (ANK) (Report on the Participation of the SAASC Delegation at the Meeting of Representatives of Soviet Public, South Africa's White Community Criticising Apartheid and the African National Congress (the ANC)) (Leverkusen, FRG, 24–27 October 1988): I Filatova's papers; Tetekin VN, Afrikanist (Africanist). Moscow: ETO Print Printers, 2011, pp. 209–18.

45. Filatova I, Notes from the meeting of the delegation at the SAASC and from unofficial conversations with its members during the visit: I Filatova's papers.

46. An official of the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee.

47. V.G. Solodovnikov – deputy chairman of the Afro–Asian Solidarity Committee and former Soviet ambassador in Zambia.

48. V.G. Shubin – head of the South African Section of the International Department of the CPSU's CC.

49. Van Zyl Slabbert F, The Other Side of History. An Anecdotal Reflection on Political Transition in South Africa. Johannesburg : Jonathan Ball, 2006, p. 34.

50. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, p. 349.

51. Conference for a Democratic Future, n.p., n.d. [Johannesburg, 1989], p. 32: I Filatova's papers.

52. Nel P, Perceptions, Images and Stereotypes in Soviet-South African Relations – A Cognitive-Interpretative Perspective. Annale, 1992/4. Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch, n.d., p. 23.

53. Kuklina IN, ‘Istoiria Yuzhnoj Afriki. Yuzhno–Afrikanskaia Respublica. Spravochnik (A History of South Africa), in Yuzhno-Afrikanskaia Respublika. Spravochnik (The Republic of South Africa. Handbook). Moscow: Africa Institute, 1994.

54. Sinitsyn SYa, ‘“Venskii vals” s burami’ (“‘Vienna Waltz” with the Boers'), in Africa v vospominaniiakh veteranov diplomaticheskoi sluzhby (Africa in the Memoirs of Veterans of Diplomatic Service). Moscow: Publishing House 21st Century–Accord, 2000,  p. 184.

55. Adamishin A, Beloie solntse Angoly (White Sun of Angola). Moscow: Vagrius, 2001, pp. 25–6, 63.

56. Personal conversation, Alexander Gogitidze.

57. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, pp. 329–30.

58. Adamishin A, Beloie solntse Angoly (White Sun of Angola). Moscow: Vagrius, 2001, pp. 83, 76–7, 88–9, 128, 139, 181–5.

59. Soviet ambassador in the People's Republic of Congo at that time was V.K. Lobachev.

60. Personal interview, Neil van Heerden, former head of the South Africa's Foreign Affairs Department, 21 September, 2005.

61. Adamishin A, Beloie solntse Angoly (White Sun of Angola). Moscow: Vagrius, 2001, pp. 141–2, 144.

62. Chester Crocker, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

63. Personal interview, Andre Jaquet, former South African diplomat, Cape Town, 26 April 2006.

64. Hansard, 1989, 11, cols 7492–7506.

65. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, pp. 365, 367–8, 347; Adamishin A, Beloie solntse Angoly (White Sun of Angola). Moscow: Vagrius, 2001, p. 157.

66. Prodiktovano obshchechelovecheskimi interesami. Press-konferentsiia E.A. Shevardnadze (Dictated by the interests of humanity. Press Conference of E. A. Shevardnadze), Izvestia, 27 March 1990.

67. Personal interview, Neil van Heerden.

68. ‘Sowjets soek SA hulp’, Die Burger, 4 August 1990. The author is grateful to Lukas Venter for this source.

69. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, p. 394.

70. Bulger P, ‘SA, Russia may strengthen ties after meetings', Business Day, 14 February 1991.

71. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, pp. 394–5.

72. Hansard, 1991, 26, col. 7654.

73. Personal conversation, Kirill Karpovich, 21 May 2010.

74. Personal conversation, Kirill Karpovich, 10 June 2004.

75. Olivier G, Olivier in Moscow, 1991–1195. G. Olivier's account of his work in Moscow: A.B. Davidson's papers.

76. Ibid.

77. Ibid .

78. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, p. 426.

79. Piliatskin B, ‘SSSR-YuAR: Vosstanovleny konsulskiie otnosheniia' (‘USSR-RSA: consular relations re-established’), Izvestia, 11 November 1991; Piliatskin B, ‘Kogda segodnia neizvestno, chto budet zavtra, inostrannyi gost ne yedet' (‘When it is not known today what happens tomorrow, foreign guest stays away'), Izvestia, 11 December 1991.

80. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, pp. 408–9.

81. Olivier G, Olivier in Moscow, 1991–1195. G. Olivier's account of his work in Moscow: A.B. Davidson's papers.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid.

84. Shubin V, Afrikanskii natsionalnyi congress v gody podpolia i vooruzhennoi borby (African National Congress in the Years of Underground and Armed Struggle). Moscow: Africa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, p. 426.

85. Ibid., p. 431.

86. Personal interview, Henning Pieterse, former chargé d'affaires of the South African embassy in Moscow, part 2, Cape Town, 10 September 2005.

87. Ibid.

88. Between the government and the ANC at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa).

89. Personal interview, Henning Pieterse, part 1, 30 June 2005.