SOUTH Africa and its neighbours were at the centre of a tussle for influence this week when top Russian and US officials visited, offering a rare moment of leverage for governments on a continent more used to being buffeted by events than wooed.
With a war in Europe pitting invading Russian forces against Ukraine’s army supplied with Western arms, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen were both on the hunt for broader international support.
For the countries of southern Africa, which maintain strong ideological and historical sympathies for Russia but hold far more significant trade balances with the European Union and United States, that rivalry presents an opportunity.
“They have the opportunity to play one side off against the other to get concessions; to get more aid, more trade,” said Steven Gruzd from the South African Institute of International Affairs. “That’s precisely what we’re seeing
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