By Tim Cocks
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa often uses its diplomatic heft to position itself as defender of the “global south” on the world stage, but the deaths of 13 of its soldiers in eastern Congo fighting have exposed an inability to project hard power in its own backyard.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has challenged U.S. hegemony, taken a strong stand against Israel’s actions in Gaza and is intent on defending the interests of developing nations, notably as it assumes the G20 presidency this year.
But in Africa, its efforts to exert influence have been plagued by missteps over the past decade.
In Democratic Republic of Congo this week, Rwandan-backed M23 rebels seized Goma, the country’s largest eastern city. A force composed of South African troops and Southern African allies that had been tasked with stopping the insurgents has taken heavy losses and is now surrounded and without a clear exit strategy.
“It’s really a blow to South Africa’s standing on the continent,” said Liesl Louw-Vaudran, senior advisor on the African Union for the International Crisis Group, a non-profit group that researches and offers ways to resolve armed conflicts.
Far from uniting African nations, the week’s events have driven a wedge notably between Ramaphosa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, arguably the continent’s two most high-profile leaders.
The two men have sparred over social media. Ramaphosa has blamed the fighting on M23 and the Rwandan army. Kagame denies backing M23, rejecting United Nations reports to the contrary, nor does he admit to military involvement in eastern Congo.
His government accuses Congo’s military of joining forces with ethnic Hutu-led militias bent on slaughtering Tutsis in Congo and threatening to Rwanda, where Hutu militias targeted Tutsis in a 1994 genocide before fleeing across the border.
It has accused South African forces of working alongside the Hutu FDLR, a charge South Africa denies.
DEFENCE IN DECLINE
South Africa’s poor showing in the Congo crisis has gone down badly at home. Photos that surfaced showing the heads of South Africa’s army and air force playing golf during the crisis this week caused public outrage.
The ruling African National Congress lost its majority last year for the first time in three decades. The Democratic Alliance, the ANC’s largest partner in Ramaphosa’s coalition government, has accused him of not providing the proper training, weapons or equipment to the troops deployed.
Addressing media in Pretoria on Wednesday, Defence Minister Angie Motshekga denied reports that South African forces in Congo were ill equipped or lacking ammunition or food.
“Losing soldiers in a battle that seems a hell of a long way away (and) has always seemed very murky,” Jakkie Cilliers, a political scientist and founder of the Institute of Security Studies. “It’s not clear … how that plays out among the general populace.”
South Africans have seen this before.
The slow decline over the past decade of the country’s military capability has led to previous failures in other peace enforcement efforts on the continent including in Central African Republic and, more recently, Mozambique.
Chris Vandome, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, said that problems in recent missions related to ammunition supplies, a lack of air support, appropriate vehicles and general logistics have led to “perceptions that this is a force that is deployed but is under-equipped to carry out the mission”.
In short, all the analysts told Reuters, the root issue is a lack of spending.
South African defence spending has dropped to 0.7% of GDP, from 1.5% of GDP in the late 1990s, said Darren Olivier, a defence analyst at African Defence Review.
That has created a chasm between South Africa’s diplomatic ambitions and its capacity to back up its words with military action.
“South Africa is trying to act as though it still has the military strength of a decade ago,” he said. “It’s delusional.”
(Additional reporting by Joe Bavier in Johannesburg; Editing by Frances Kerry)
