In Namibia and South Africa, the disappearance of Mikhail Gorbachev revives the memory of an important part of their history: the struggle for independence. By sounding the death knell of the Cold War, the last leader of the Soviet Union (USSR), who died on August 30, 2022 at the age of 91, made a decisive contribution to the end of apartheid and the advent of democracy in these countries.
“In favor of our own liberation, Mikhail Gorbachev maintained the support of the Soviet Union for our struggle in the critical period which led to the lifting of the ban on the liberation movement and our transition to democracy”, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement (link in English)the day after the disappearance of the Russian politician. The tribute from the South African head of state is one of the most extensive that has emanated from the continent.
“Mikhail Gorbachev was a statesman who knew how to reconcile his love for his country and the promotion of its interests with the vision of a world where conflicts would be reduced“, underlined Cyril Ramaphosa. South Africa considers itself as “greatly indebted for the support provided” by the USSR “over a long period – including during Mr. Gorbachev’s tenure – to the South African liberation movement and the anti-colonial struggles in southern Africa”says the press release from the South African presidency.
Mikhail Gorbachev “was integral to the system that sustained the liberation struggles in Namibia and southern Africa, as well as in Africa and around the world”, Jerobeam Shaanika from the Namibian Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation told The Namibian (link in English).
For Chris Saunders, professor emeritus at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the USSR’s aid to the military branches of the liberation movements – the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO, Namibia) and the National Congress African (ANC, South Africa) – “was essential to enable them to carry out armed struggles against the South African regime”. Without this support, he writes in The Conversation, these political parties “might not have survived in exile, nor ultimately come to power“. However, he continues, “It was not these armed struggles that brought them to power” but rather “the fact that from 1988 the balance of forces in the region changed”. And Chris Sauders to conclude : “Gorbachev played a major role in this regard”.
In fact, when he became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev decides in the process to disengage his country from the regional wars in which he is involved, particularly in Afghanistan and Angola. In this Portuguese-speaking African country, a civil war broke out in 1975 after independence from Portugal. The Angolan conflict, which is an episode of the Cold War on African soil, pits the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita). The MPLA is supported by the USSR whose armed wing is Cuba and Unita has the support of the United States and South Africa, which not only occupies part of Angolan territory but also neighboring Namibia.
In December 1988, thanks to the diplomatic initiatives of Gorbachev’s USSR, a peace agreement was signed in New York, in the United States, to put an end to the civil war in Angola and obtain the independence of Namibia. It provides for the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angolan territory as well as that of South Africa from Namibian soil. While the conflict in Angola will continue despite the 1988 agreement, Namibia will become an independent state in 1990. “The success of the Namibian transition made possible the subsequent South African transition.” The experience of Namibia will allow the new South African president, Frederik de Klerk, to work for the end of apartheid by extending his hand to the ANC of Nelson Mandela who will become in 1994 the first black president of the Independent South Africa.
“Of all the external factors that contributed to the end of apartheid in 1994, the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the process that led to the end of the Soviet Union must be counted among the most important. And it is to Gorbachev that we owe it”, insists Chris Saunders of the University of Cape Town.
Thus, under Gorbachev and with relative success, the Soviet Union participated in the emergence of States on the continent, following the example of Angola, South Africa or Namibia.
After renouncing to exploit the African countries in the East-West showdown at the end of the 1980s, Russia appears today as the ally of failing States such as Mali or the Central African Republic, even if it can always claim to have the support of regimes that are more unanimous on the continent.
The disappearance of Mikhail Gorbachev makes inevitable the comparison with Vladimir Putin who will not attend the funeral of the former Russian leader on September 3. Unsurprisingly and in the space of three decades, Gorbachev and Putin embody for posterity two diametrically opposed faces of Russian influence on the African continent.