Sanctioned Russian Aircraft Torpedoes South Africa’s ‘Trade Rescue Mission’ to US

JOHANNESBURG—When officials from South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) return from missions to foreign countries, there’s usually great fanfare.

Press conferences are held and strings of “successes” are announced to the nation. Officials are keen to take credit for political and economic gains.

This was not the case when President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special envoys to the United States returned from Washington last week.

In fact, the delegation, led by the ANC leader’s security adviser Sydney Mufamadi, slipped quietly into Johannesburg without a word.

The team had visited the U.S. Capitol on a mission to convince American lawmakers not to push to limit trade ties with South Africa because of the ANC’s increasingly close “friendship” with the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

They had specifically sought assurances that the Biden administration wouldn’t freeze South Africa out of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

AGOA is a US government initiative that allows products from certain African countries, including South Africa, duty and quota-free access to lucrative American markets.

The US government’s AGOA online portal says Africa’s most industrialized economy exported goods worth almost $3.5 billion to America under AGOA in 2022.

According to South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry, there was $21 billion in trade between the US and South Africa in 2021.

Many local journalists and citizens were left scratching their heads at the silence of Mufamadi, and the government as a whole, given the possible ramifications of loss of trade with the United States for an economy brought to its knees by decades of ANC corruption and mismanagement.

Now, a possible reason for the tight lips has emerged: At almost exactly the same time as the ANC delegation was meeting members of Congress in Washington, telling them the Ramaphosa administration’s relationship with Russia was “just normal diplomacy,” Pretoria was secretly allowing a United States-sanctioned Russian cargo aircraft to land at a military base near the South African capital.

An aviation expert told The Epoch Times the flight of the Ilyushin II-76 into and out of Waterkloof base was not recorded on commercial aircraft tracking systems, as it switched off its radar identification system.

The US Treasury slapped sanctions on the Ilyushin’s owner, JSC Aviacon Zitotrans, on Jan. 26 this year.

It said the Russian government “proxy” company had “handled cargo shipments for sanctioned Russian Federation defense entities.

Additionally, Aviacon Zitotrans has shipped military equipment such as rockets, warheads, and helicopter parts all over the world,” including to Russian forces in Ukraine.

South African Defense Force spokesperson, Brigadier-General Andries Mahapa, told The Epoch Times: “The plane was delivering diplomatic mail for despatch to the Russian embassy in Pretoria.”

Spokesperson for South Africa’s Department of International Relations, Clayson Monyela, commented: “This aircraft was carrying nothing sinister,” but would not elaborate to The Epoch Times on why the government had allowed a sanctioned plane to land in the first place.

It didn’t take long for news of the Ilyushin’s touchdown on South African soil to reach the ears of members of the U.S. Congress.

Jim Risch, ranking Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, was the first to react to the aircraft’s visit, when he posted on Twitter: “Yet another indication that the government of South Africa is not exercising sovereign neutrality, but rather supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“The United States should start taking action to respond to these direct threats to our sovereign interests.”

A member of the South African government involved in planning what he called the “trade rescue mission” to Washington spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity.

“So there our guys are, telling the Americans we’re neutral and basically we have to keep close to Putin because we are partners in BRICS and we want to try to play a role in bringing peace in Ukraine.

“And then we hear this plane has landed in Pretoria and it is a sanctioned Russian plane that has in the past been used to carry weapons.

“It was deeply embarrassing and it has undermined everything we wanted to achieve,” the official said.

“It really messed us up, because some of the Americans were throwing it in our faces and we did not have a leg to stand on.”

BRICS is a bloc of leading developing world economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

South Africa also has deep historical ties with Moscow, with the former Soviet Union having supported the ANC’s armed struggle against apartheid with weapons and money.

The ANC government has been riling the Western alliance against Russia since the beginning of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It refused to condemn Moscow’s aggression, and has repeatedly described Putin and the Russian government as “South Africa’s great friends.”

Pretoria has, however, all along insisted it is “neutral” and “nonaligned,” but its recent actions have suggested otherwise.

In December, it allowed the United States-sanctioned Russian cargo ship Lady R to dock at the Simon’s Town naval base near Cape Town, and refused to explain what the vessel was there to do.

In February, the New York Times quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying the American government believed that “munitions and rocket propellant that Russia could use in the Ukraine war” may have been loaded onto the Lady R.

The South African government described the allegations as “false.”

ANC officials have also been making regular visits to Moscow at Putin’s invitation.

Last year, Defense Minister Thandi Modise was a guest speaker at a “security conference” in the Russian capital.

In February, the navies of China, Russia and South Africa participated in a “joint military exercise” off South Africa’s east coast, after Pretoria had declined to take part in American-led exercises held in various parts of Africa.

The Ramaphosa administration has also made it clear that Putin is “welcome” to attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in early August, despite the International Criminal Court issuing a war crimes warrant for the Russian leader’s arrest.

“South Africa is clearly part of a Chinese-led effort to counterbalance Western support for Ukraine, and that’s what they couldn’t hide from the members of Congress in D.C.,” said John Steenhuisen, the leader of South Africa’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance.

“Like China, the Ramaphosa administration doesn’t provide lethal aid to Putin, but they help that maniac’s war effort nonetheless, by for example allowing Russian warships and sanctioned vessels safe passage,” he told The Epoch Times.

“How this is in the interests of peace is beyond reasonable thinking.”

Steenhuisen said the South African government seemed to be doing its best to “prove that it is an implacable ally” to Moscow, rather than a “neutral onlooker.”

Speaking to the New York Times, Risch seemed to agree, when he commented: “The South African people remain important partners of the United States, but we can no longer accept its government’s continued hostile acts against US sovereign interests and must respond appropriately.”

The Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson on foreign relations, Emma-Louise Powell, said South Africa now faced the “real risk of being expelled from its single most important trade treaty—AGOA, all because the ANC wants to bend to the will of a Kremlin warmonger and protect the donations that are being channeled to the ANC by Russian oligarchs.”

The ANC dismissed her claim as “stupid, desperate, and baseless.”

But it seems as if the South African government’s special visit to Washington has backfired, sparking calls from American legislators for South Africa’s scheduled hosting of the AGOA forum in November to be scrapped.

“This could be the first step towards us being excluded from AGOA,” South African independent economist Iraj Abedian told The Epoch Times.

“Excuse the wordplay here, but we just cannot expect to get away with playing non-stop Russian roulette. Sooner or later the hammer is going to fall on the bullet that the ANC keeps on loading into the chamber.”