The head of American diplomacy aims in particular to bring Pretoria closer to Westerners as part of the new African strategy of the United States.
Le Monde with AFP
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began an African tour on Sunday, August 7 on South Africa to try to bring diplomacy closer to this Western camp country. This trip, which will then lead him and until Thursday in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, aims in particular to thwart Russian influence on the African continent.
It narrowly follows the visit in Africa at the end of July of the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, passed by Congo-Brazzaville, Uganda, Egypt and Ethiopia.
For his first stage, Mr. Blinken chose to stop in South Africa, a country which, since the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine on February 24, adopted a neutral position and refused to join Western calls to condemn Moscow.
Monday, Mr. Blinken must speak with the head of South African diplomacy, Naledi Pandor, “recent and current developments concerning the global geopolitical situation”, and make announcements concerning the new African government strategy American, Pretoria said in a press release.
“Crucial allies”
Sunday, the American Secretary of State first went to the Hector Pieterson memorial in Soweto, near Johannesburg, stage of many heads of state in official visit. He visited the museum built in tribute to the students killed in a demonstration of high school students and middle school students in 1976 during a police repression which shocked far beyond the country and was a turning point in the fight against the South African system of the Apartheid, discriminating to the country’s black majority and finally abolished in 1991.
m. Blinken was accompanied by Antoinette Sithole, the sister of Hector Pieterson, who, at the age of 12, was the first killed, on June 16, 1976, among the more than 170 demonstrators victims of Soweto. Youth had raised themselves against the obligation to study in Afrikaans, the language of the white minority regime in power.
According to Fonteh Akum, head of the Cercle de reflection Institute for Security Studies, based in Pretoria, the visit of Antony Blinken aims in particular to “bring southern Africa closer to the western camp” as part of the new African strategy of United States.
South Africa never digested NATO military intervention in Libya in 2011. She had her arm was twisted to approve her while she was sitting on the Security Council of the UN, before criticizing this war and accusing Westerners of having abused this mandate to bring down Colonel Mouammar Khadafi.
Historically, the ANC in power in South Africa since the advent of democracy in 1994, was close to the Soviet block which supported the struggles of emancipation in the world.
Since 2011, the country has been a member of the diplomatic group of emerging economies BRICS, bringing together Brazil, Russia, India and China, operating at one time d assiduously one to two annual meetings, who had helped consolidate links. In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the BRICS to cooperate in the face of “selfish actions” of Western countries, against the backdrop of unprecedented sanctions against Moscow due to the Ukrainian conflict.
without consideration
m. Blinken intends to show African countries when they “are crucial allies on the most burning issues of our time” such as “the fight against the effects of climate change, food insecurity and world pandemics”, indicated at the end of July the State Department.
After Johannesburg, Mr. Blinken must go to the DRC, then to Rwanda, prey to a revival of tensions with his Congolese neighbor who accuses him of supporting the rebels of the March 23 (M23), what Kigali Dése.
This is Mr. Blinken’s second trip to sub -Saharan Africa since taking office. In 2021, he went to Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal.
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, American diplomacy in Africa focused above all on competition with China, which made significant investments in infrastructure on the African continent and which, unlike the United States, has done so without asking States on democracy or human rights as a counterpart.