Geopolitics

How Vladimir Putin got checkmated in South Africa - Takeaways for team Trump

In the summer of 2003, I was upbraided by then long-shot presidential candidate of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She said, "Riva, do not ever tell me how to manage Liberian politics!"  I learned a valuable lesson that day—an outsider could not judge cause-and-effect in a complex foreign political context.  Two years later, Sirleaf went on to win the presidency and become the first woman democratically elected to lead an African nation.

On May 29, 2024, at polling station in Pretoria, South Africa, attached to an election study tour as an advisor to the country's leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), during the most consequential election since Nelson Mandela rose to the Presidency in the first post-Apartheid, all-race, political contest, I witnessed with great satisfaction how Vladimir Putin learned the same lesson Ellen taught me. Though, I remain unconvinced he sees it that way.

Below I reveal how Russian security services infiltrated South African's political party machinery hoping to draw the country completely into Russia's orbit. It was a masterful plot, praying upon the corruption it enabled, and generational tribal fissures easily gas-lighted. In the end, they failed, but barely, and with no thanks to the Biden Administration.

Team Trump be forewarned. We might not be so lucky the next time.  Here's how it all unfolded and my takeaways.

In 2014, following Russia's annexation of Crimea, Vladmir Putin turned his mischief making to Africa, deploying the Wagner Group, now Russia's Africa Corps, to destabilize Western interests - a payback for their isolation of Russia after Crimea, an imperative which became more so, after Putin's full-on invasion of Ukraine. The Russian mercenaries found fertile ground backing deeply unpopular authoritarian governments in their battle against Islamic extremists.

The misadventure exceeded all expectations. By 2023, much of the Sahel, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, fell to military rule. Buoyed by the ease of his success, and the departure of all American and French forces, Putin set his sights on a more consequential prize, South Africa, an economic powerhouse with a vibrant constitutional democracy, but whose state functioning and economy had collapsed after 30 years of one-party misrule by the Africa National Congress (ANC).

The courtship came easy, championed by a sympathetic Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, who shoved the country into what Congressional leaders, Republican and Democrat, labeled the Axis of Malign Actors. South Africa's resulting loss of bipartisan support wasn't enough. Putin wanted to hedge his bets ahead of the country's national elections. He decided to play politics, KGB-style.

In July of 2023, on the margins of the Russia-Africa Summit, the Russian leader negotiated the release from prison of former South African President Jacob Zuma, who was on medical parole after being convicted of racketeering, money laundering and fraud associated with his 10-year presential reign, with his most notorious graft of all, a $100-billion-dollar nuclear power deal with Russia, the largest-ever state contract.

As if scripted by Putin, which it was, Zuma returned to his native province of KwaZulu Natal and registered a new political party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK). And with the backing of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), the MK made its meteoric electoral debut, upending the country's politics, eclipsing the pro-Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to become the third most popular party. The party did not declare a single Rand of financial support with the National Electoral Commission. Just 'organic' grassroots support, so the MK claimed.

During the pre-election period, the surge of disinformation into South Africa was unprecedented, captured in a Heat Mapping by the U.S. Defense Department's Africa Center for Strategic Studies. It included standing up African influencers, digital avatars, and the circulation of fake and out-of-context videos amplified through multiple channels of Russian state-controlled media.

As for the Biden Administration, it had been scolded into diplomatic silence since the December 2022 Lady R  incident – when a sanctioned Russian vessel docked in Simon's Town Naval Base caught loading weapons for Russia's war in Ukraine. U.S. Ambassador Rueben Brigety, rightly so, went public on the illegal trafficking of arms. Predictably, he Foreign Minister cried foul, denied it all, and demanded an official apology. The State Department complied. As a result, the U.S. stood down during the country's elections, deploying a single U.S. observer from its embassy in Pretoria. I was the only other.

Putin was convinced that he would become the Power Broker post-election, confident in his operatives' ability to leverage the MK and corral the pro-Russian faction of the ANC and the EFF into a Dooms Day Coalition.

But the GNU didn't count on the MK's vote share collapsing the ANC's majority and weakening its pro-Russian faction. Nor did they foresee the durability of the pro-market, pro-West Democratic Alliance (DA), the country's official opposition.  And they misjudged South Africa's leading politicians, ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen, and their readiness to put aside their ideological differences, manage the shouts of betrayal from their cadres, and form a  Government of National Unity (GNU).  They grounded their coalition in Respect for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Rule of Law. The MK and the EFF were left to agitate on the outside.

Six months in, the GNU's constitutional democratic center is holding, buoyed by investment optimism and a Rand appreciating to new heights. But unsurprisingly, it is the matter of foreign policy, and  the ANC's proximity to Russia and other anti-West interests, including Iran, where the first real rifts are emerging.

Last month, DA leader Steenhuisen rejected President Ramaphosa's public display of affection with Putin at  BRICS summit in Russia, calling him a "valued ally of South Africa."  The DA is challenging the ANC's unilateral action to force Taiwan to move its Representative Office from the Capital, and actions to permanently severe ties with Israel.

Emma Powell, the DA's spokesperson on international relations, suggest that the ideological fault lines in the unity government need to be mediated and a form of reconciliation found so the country can be consistent in its policy of non-alignment. But that's easier said than done.

The ANC firebrands had one non-negotiable going into the GNU negotiations—the total control of the foreign policy portfolio, including the Department of International Relations and Cooperations (DIRCO) and the parliamentary committees with oversight. This same Pro-Russia faction is intent on splitting the coalition apart. It's Putin's Plan B.

Team Trump be forewarned.

The Moral of my Election Observation Story is threefold. Never underestimate the pride South Africans hold in their constitutional democracy, and the depths they will go to protect it. Never underestimate how far a well-trained KGB spy will go in pursuit of payback and power. And, as Ellen taught me, know your limitations.

K. Riva Levinson is president and CEO of KRL International LLC, a D.C.-based consultancy that works in the world's emerging markets, award-winning author of "Choosing the Hero: My Improbable Journey and the Rise of Africa's First Woman President. You can follow her on X @rivalevinson. The article was originally published in The Africa Report on November 11, and by National Security News on November 21.