By Merlyn Mwanza
Uganda and Namibia abstained from a UN vote condemning Russia despite the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky having recently called the President of the former Yoweri Museveni and United States of America First Lady Jill Biden having been visiting the latter.
The two countries joined the other 22 African countries who did not cast a vote against Russia, with Zambia joining the 31 who voted to condemn Russia.
Barely a day before the UN vote, Ukraine’s President Zelensky made a phone call to his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni. The country abstained from Thursday’s vote as it did a year ago, and so did Namibia while it hosted US First Lady Jill Biden who is on her maiden tour of Africa in her current role.
“It’s not flipping a light switch,” said US Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken to the Atlantic. “It’s moving an aircraft carrier,” he added, expressing optimism that South Africa was “on a slow trajectory to non-align with Russia.” He acknowledged that such countries have had a decades-long relationship with Russia and had the support of the Soviet Union in their fight against apartheid and colonialism.
A year since the war in Ukraine began, Africa’s reaction appears not to have shifted much. In a UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion, African countries were still as divided as when the war began.
An increase in engagement and visits from senior officials from both Western countries and Russia over the past year have done little to sway them.
During the struggle against white-minority rule in South Africa, the US government designated the Africa National Congress – today’s ruling party – a terrorist group. Despite winning a Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, jointly with the last apartheid leader Frederik de Klerk “for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa” and becoming the country’s first black president from 1994 to 1999, Nelson Mandela remained on the US terror watchlist until it was revised in 2008.
“Of course, unfortunately, more than unfortunately, the United States was much too sympathetic to the apartheid regime, so that history also doesn’t get erased, you know, overnight,” Blinken was quoted as saying.
