U.S. President Donald Trump followed through on his promise to punish South Africa by signing an executive order Friday stopping all aid to the country over what he called a human rights violation against a white minority group.
The Trump administration says a land expropriation law South Africa recently passed was “blatantly” discriminatory against its white Afrikaners, who are descendants of Dutch and other European colonials. The Trump administration said the South African government was allowing violent attacks against Afrikaner farming communities.
It also accused South Africa of supporting “bad actors” in the world, including the militant Palestinian group Hamas, Russia and Iran.
In case anyone wonders why South Africa tends to side with countries like Russia, it’s because for all of the finger wagging and strongly worded letters that the Western world did about apartheid, nations like the Soviet Union were the only ones that actually bothered supporting the resistance in any meaningful way.
The Western world was too busy looking for communist boogeymen everywhere, so while they condemned apartheid on the surface and in the news, they actually supported the apartheid government in their fight against the ‘evil commies’ via proxy with Israel. Israel and the old SA government were BFFs and a lot of apartheid South Africa’s military equipment was Israeli and American.
Which has nothing to do with the current fascist regime in Russia, which was built on the ruins of the Soviet Union.
Who was the biggest funder of the ANC during the apartheid years, by the way?
Interesting question. Not something that was taught in school or that I’ve really seen discussed. Going by the Wikipedia article on the ANC, it would appear that the answer is the Soviet Union, as I would’ve expected:
I can’t see it being the USA considering that both Mandela and the ANC were on US terror watch lists from what looks like the 1960s up until 2008.
The Sovs sent 16 million rubles, or about $25 million, over the course of apartheid. Much of that was in material support, so let’s be generous and quadruple that, to account for the fact that Soviet goods would’ve been cheaper considering PPP, and put it at $100 million.
Sweden alone provided over $400 million.
‘The West’ is not just the US.
South Africa’s close relationship with Russia, for that matter, dates to the mid-2000s, not the immediate aftermath of apartheid. One might consider the immediate recipients of the success of that aid to be more grateful to their supposed benefactors in Russia than the next generation of politicians, but such is apparently not the case.
Either that, or the real reasons behind South Africa’s realignment to Russia are unrelated to support for the struggle against apartheid.
Oh yeah on that I agree. I was merely trying to provide context for South Africa’s love for Russia but honestly, the Soviet Union and Russia aren’t even the same country. But people on the ground who aren’t that well educated or versed in history don’t see it that way.
Interesting to hear about Sweden. I can’t say they or any of the Scandinavian countries have ever come up in history class or even really featured much in geopolitical shenanigans involving South Africa for as long as I’ve been alive and able to form memories.
May I ask where you get the stats from? Not out of doubt, I’m just interested. And trying to search “ANC apartheid era funding” wasn’t very helpful.
The link downloads a pdf, so be forewarned; sorry, couldn’t find a simple webpage with it. First paragraph in gives the 400 million number, but if you go further in it describes it piecemeal and in Swedish krona, if you’ve an interest in more precise figures.
This primarily pro-Soviet piece cites 16 million rubles by official figures; I missed further down where it cited an additional 36 million rubles in military aid, which would make the total 52 million rubles, which would total ~70 million USD by official Soviet exchange rates. Quadrupling that number to factor in the price of goods and miscellanea still yields 280 million to Sweden’s 400 million, however; and while Sweden was by far the largest Western backer of the ANC, it was far from the only one.
Thank you! I will take a good look at that a little later when I’m in front of my laptop. Kind of a useless reply but I don’t want to come across like I’m ignoring this either while I still go on shitposting elsewhere.