Lessons from Caracas

By R.W. Johnson

South Africa has appealed to the UN Security Council to meet in emergency session to consider the crisis in Venezuela resulting from the seizure of its president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife by a US military task force, upon the orders of US President Donald Trump. They were whisked off to the US and have since appeared in a court in New York, charged under US law with various drug and arms-related offences.

South Africa argues that the US action has violated the UN Charter which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of sovereign states. Such action undermines the international system, it argues, and erodes the principle of equality among nations. All such disputes, it says, must be dealt with through lawful international processes.

That all sounds fine until one remembers that when Russia effectively snatched Crimea from Ukraine by armed force in 2014, South Africa did not object, and instead abstained at the UN. Moreover, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the SA foreign ministry initially condemned the invasion, but this was quickly overturned by the SA Presidency, which insisted that — despite this constituting a clear violation of sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, and the UN Charter – South Africa did not condemn Russia for its action. This remains Pretoria’s position today after more than a million people have died in the Ukraine war.

Moreover, in 2016 China was found guilty of having broken the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by its insistence that, in effect, the whole of the South China Sea belongs to it, and its policy of inserting armed redoubts throughout that sea. China’s policies had infringed upon the rights of a whole series of neighbouring countries, all of whom were up in arms against this straightforward imperial grab. South Africa, however, refused to condemn China and merely said that while it upheld UNCLOS it believed that all such disputes must be settled through discussion and peaceful negotiation.

In effect, this simply accepted the Chinese grab – which was enforced not through discussion but by the armed might of the Chinese Navy and Coast Guard. Since then there have been repeated clashes in which China has used force against neighbouring countries. South Africa has not criticised any of these Chinese actions.

In other words, South Africa has long ago given up observing any principles in its attitude to such matters and it can hardly be surprised now that its protests are not taken seriously. Yet how has this situation arisen ?

In 1994, after all, the Mandela government certainly accepted the UN Charter in full and did not make any exceptions to that. In those days South Africa really did have a principled foreign policy, as was shown by Mandela’s open denunciation of the Abacha government in Nigeria for its various crimes. However, even then that policy came under strong negative pressure from Thabo Mbeki and Aziz Pahad who insisted on an “African realist” policy, which meant you never criticised other African states.

Moreover, there was a strong Islamist lobby within DIRCO (ie. the foreign ministry) which was not content with Mandela’s relatively even-handed attitude. Although South Africa sympathised with the Palestinian cause, in those days it also maintained perfectly normal diplomatic and trade links with Israel.

Over time, the Islamist grip on DIRCO has tightened considerably. As a result, South Africa withdrew its ambassador from Israel in 2018 and it has had no ambassador there since then, though the embassy remains open under a charge d’affaires. In November 2023, following the Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s counter-attack on Gaza, Parliament adopted a motion calling on the government to close the Israeli embassy in Pretoria, and suspend all diplomatic relations with Israel until a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza and peace negotiations begun.

In fact, the Israeli embassy remains open, though Israel recalled its ambassador after this unfriendly action in November 2023. It is worth noting that despite the ceasefire in Gaza and the ongoing peace negotiations there, neither the government nor Parliament has responded to the changed situation in the way that it had promised to do. Moreover, the ANC is now backing an Al Jama’ah motion which seeks to criminalise all support for the Zionist cause (i.e. anything that supports the existence of Israel) in South Africa – although this is bound to be taken as a frontal assault on the local Jewish community.

A whole new dynamic began in 2006 with the first formalised grouping of the four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). This led to the first BRIC summit in Moscow in 2009 and the formation of BRICS, with the inclusion of South Africa in 2010. Inevitably, the heart of BRICS is the Russia-China nexus. The two powers are currently linked in what is said to be a friendship “without bounds”. Both are Great Powers, both with nuclear weapons, both with permanent Security Council membership and vetoes – and China is the overwhelming economic power within the grouping.

Moreover, it was clear from the outset that both Russia and China wished to create an alternative to the existing international order which they viewed as Western-dominated. In effect this meant that BRICS was open to suggestions of making major changes to the UN Security Council, though virtually all groupings say that: but there is no agreement about actual changes.

More significantly, BRICS wants to replace the Bretton Woods institutions and the dollar-based international economy. There is no doubt that this anti-Western (which in Africa’s eyes means anti-colonial) theme was deeply attractive to South Africa and many other Third World countries and provided a primary motive for their seamless adhesion to BRICS.

In explaining their vision for the future, the Russians and Chinese spoke of the rise of a new multipolar order in which all manner of middle and lesser powers would become more significant. This would, they inferred, have the effect of making all countries equal. This was heady talk for the likes of South Africa which quickly imagined itself taking a more prominent international role. The then foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, quickly became a vocal spokesperson for multipolarity.

This was incautious because DIRCO had not made any proper assessment of what multipolarity would mean. In fact they had been sold a misleading slogan mainly in the national interests of Russia and China. In the first instance, of course, what it meant was that South Africa would take pains to stay in step with the BRICS leaders, Russia and China.

Secondly, though, more thought should have been given to the way Russia and China behaved. Neither country felt constrained by the old rules-based order of the Western-created system and neither country seemed to believe in international law. If China felt like disregarding its promise of “one country, two systems” with regard to Hong Kong, it simply went ahead and suppressed democracy there, despite its many promises to the contrary.

And whatever promises it might make now, it is clear that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would see the extinction of democracy there too. If it felt like invading Taiwan, China would simply do so, just as it felt free to disregard UNCLOS and to bully all its neighbours in the South China Sea. In effect, China was a Great Power and would do whatever it wanted.

Russia was the same. If it wanted to take Crimea away from Ukraine, it would. If it wanted to invade Ukraine, it would. It was completely impervious to arguments about international law, territorial integrity and national sovereignty. Indeed, Moscow quite openly talked of recolonising the Baltic republics once Ukraine had been absorbed and meanwhile, in its determination to get what it wanted, it repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons. For both Russia and China are imperial powers, bent on reconstructing their empires as they were at their height. The lesson for other, smaller powers was simply to take what you can get, since a rules-based international order no longer exists. In effect, this reinstates the old saying that the strong will do what they can, and the weak and poor will suffer what they must. Any notion of the equality of all states is rendered simply laughable.

For most smaller powers, such as South Africa, the fact was that the old rules-based order had given far more protection and predictability than the new free-for-all which really just applies to Great Powers. The result is what we see: South Africa refuses to condemn even the most piratical acts by Russia or China, but then tries to insist on all the old rules being followed when the US is concerned.

The net result is that no one pays attention to South Africa. The completely contemptuous way in which Trump is attempting to evict South Africa from the G20 carries its own message. And while there have been discreet expressions of sympathy with Pretoria, no one is publicly taking its part. In a multipolar world, only a few very large powers such as India, Brazil or Indonesia have much chance of influence alongside the Great Powers.

South Africa has much to lose in the Venezuelan case because Maduro was an ideological ally. Washington has already made it clear that it expects Venezuela to abandon its contacts with Hezbollah and Iran which have no business in “our hemisphere”. No doubt the remnants of the Maduro regime will resist – but for how long ? The US now controls Venezuela’s oil – its main source of income – and completely dominates the country militarily. Moreover, it is well known that the Venezuelan Opposition really won the last elections with a two-thirds majority, so for how long can regime change be resisted ?

It is worth noting that events in Venezuela are a major, possibly even fatal blow to Cuba. The Cubans were the principal supporters of the Maduro regime in the Western hemisphere and there are thousands of Cuban military “advisers” in Venezuela. In particular, Maduro relied on Cuban counter-intelligence agents and bodyguards, trusting them more than his native Venezuelans. The US strike which led to Maduro’s capture inflicted 40 deaths on the local forces: 32 of these were Cubans. In return for its assistance, Cuba received Venezuelan oil at a heavily discounted price.

Now, all such arrangements will end. The new US pro-consul in charge of Venezuela, Marco Rubio, is of Cuban exile stock and is a bitter enemy of the Havana regime. Already the US embargo on Venezuelan oil shipments has produced multiple black-outs in Cuba, which is completely dependent on Venezuelan oil. But now, clearly, all such oil shipments to Cuba will stop and all Cubans will have to leave Venezuela. Trump has already said that he doubts that the Cuban regime will survive and that the US will soon have to discuss “the Cuban problem”.

If DIRCO is even half-awake, it should be alarmed by South Africa’s growing vulnerability. If one looks back to January 2025. South Africa then was strongly aligned with the anti-Israel Resistance Front – Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – and it was one of the few defenders anywhere of the brutal Assad regime in Syria. Since then Hamas and Hezbollah have been decimated and many of their leaders killed, the Houthis have been battered, and Iran has lost a war and is in turmoil such that its ruling regime may not survive. The Assad regime has fallen and been replaced by a new government considerably more friendly to the West.

The result has been a sweeping loss of Pretoria’s friends and allies. The year ended with the US rudely evicting South Africa from the G20. Now, with 2026 only a few days old, South Africa has lost its ideological soulmate, Venezuela, and Cuba, one of its most important remaining allies, is under severe threat.

Another way of putting this is that South Africa’s foreign policy of radical Third Worldism has led it into a cul-de-sac. Even within Africa it is now a lonely exception. All of Africa’s most successful developing states – Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya and Mauritius – have adopted neutralist policies which leave them on good terms with the West. Even though virtually all of those more successful states have far larger Muslim populations than South Africa, none of them have adopted such extreme positions on the Middle East. Indeed, both Morocco and Egypt – exclusively Muslim countries – have recognised Israel and maintain diplomatic relations and trade with Jerusalem.

All of which should be food for thought in Pretoria. It is not yet as internationally isolated as the apartheid regime became, but the direction of travel is definitely worrying, and not at all in Pretoria’s favour.

Featured image: An earlier photograph of Nicolas Maduro. (Flicr)