04 Mar 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive
Russia’s excuse is the defence
of minority rights. The Crimea, demographically, is a sort of Western Cape of
the Ukraine, writes Tony Leon
 |
| Pro-Russian protesters with Russian flags take part in a rally in central Donetsk on Saturday |
IN SEPTEMBER 2006, long before the Russian president had broken his own
country’s new democracy or thought of invading his near neighbours, Vladimir
Putin paid a visit to our Parliament. Perhaps to make a point about the genuine
multiparty outfit she presided over, then speaker Baleka Mbete included some
opposition figures along with the African National Congress (ANC) heavyweights
in a parliamentary tea party she hosted for Putin.
The enigmatic Russian president nodded politely and mostly without
comment as the ANC members expressed great appreciation for the
"significant role" the USSR had played in the "struggle for the
liberation of SA".
As I awaited my turn to exchange conversational niceties with the
president in our midst, I dismissed my first thought as somewhat undiplomatic:
that, in fact, it was the fall of communism in Eastern Europe that emboldened
the reform process in South Africa, initially at the hand of FW de Klerk, and
that those seated around Putin were the beneficiaries of that singular moment
in history back in 1989.
So when my turn came, I sought the safer topic of my family’s geography
and their arrival on these shores back in the late 19th century. I advised the
president, with some certainty, that I could claim to be the only South African
present who could lay claim to a Russian grandmother!
Putin responded with apparent interest via his interpreter, and asked
where in Russia my grandmother’s family originated. I answered: "From
Sevastopol in the Crimea." The intense and ultra-polite Putin then put me
to rights when he deadpanned: "Crimea is no longer part of Mother Russia,
but is now part of the Ukraine."
The cascading crisis in Ukraine, and in particular in the Crimean
peninsula, this past week suggests that it is possible that the borders of one
of the most contested countries in Europe, if not the world, perched as it is
between the eastern borders of Russia and the democratic nations of the
European Union (EU), could be redrawn again. And military force has already
been deployed by Russia in the largest of the former Soviet republics outside
Russia.
Whether this will lead to a reigniting of the Cold War or to a new
chapter in the storybook of 1989’s more or less peaceful democratic revolution
in the satellites of the old Soviet Union remains deeply uncertain.
Events in faraway Ukraine should resonate deeply over here, even as we
preoccupy ourselves with such matters as the Oscar Pistorius trial, which, to
be fair, will engross most of the watching world.
By ideological inclination, and joined as we are through Brics and
apparent nuclear power deals and the very history my parliamentary colleagues
related to Putin eight years ago, South Africa tilts toward Moscow. Then again,
the EU is our largest trading partner and the struggle for democracy here in
many ways mirrors the demands of the protesters in Kiev who toppled their
corrupt and increasingly despotic president, Viktor Yanukovych, last week.
Putin’s geostrategic interest lies in securing the Black Sea naval bases Russia
leases in Crimea from Ukraine and in preventing the country’s drift from
Moscow’s orbit into the West, where the heart of Kiev’s new leadership
apparently lies. But, in an ironic twist (for South Africa’s majoritarian
government), the excuse Moscow has provided for its actions is the defence of
minority rights. The Crimea, demographically, is a sort of Western Cape of the
Ukraine. Its population is 60% ethnic Russian but this group forms only
one-sixth of the population of Ukraine.
But it is in the universal realm of so-called democratic deepening that
the relevant analogy between South Africa and Ukraine and other startup
democracies is located. Back in 1991, when South Africa was negotiating its
democratic constitution, Ukraine peacefully separated from the Soviet Union
and, like us, gave up its nuclear capability. Its first democratic elections
went well, then badly, and a people-inspired "Orange Revolution" in
2004 appeared to reset it on a democratic course. But since then — in the words
of the Financial Times — "the country has been led by a cynical, corrupt
leadership that has taken Ukraine today to the brink of economic
meltdown".
There’s a growing and depressingly lengthening list of countries where
the democratic wave was accompanied by a deep authoritarian undertow. Think of
Egypt recently and Russia itself over the past decade, to mention two stand-out
examples. South Africa, despite more than 3,000 protests in the past three
months, maintains its democratic stance. But even we, in the words of this
week’s Economist survey, have joined the ranks of "some recent recruits to
the democratic camp (that) have lost their lustre".
Our next election will be only a part of regaining our democratic sheen.
It’s what comes afterwards in reinvigorating our independent institutions and
reanimating the checks and balances on an overreaching state that will sustain
us for the long haul.
• Leon is the author of The Accidental
Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA
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