Zuma and Putin: a nuke bromance

President Jacob Zuma visits Russia. He meets its president, Vladimir Putin. What they discuss is not known.

The visit is off the usual schedule and Zuma is said to have spent some time recuperating from a health scare.

A few weeks later, Business Day reports that the Energy Department and Russian nuclear company Rosatom have issued a joint statement to the effect that "agreement had already been reached that South Africa would procure nuclear power plants from Russia".

The newspaper quotes Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson as saying that the agreement "will allow us to implement our ambitious plans for the creation by 2030 of 9 600MW of new nuclear capacities".

The government clarifies that this is merely one of many "country-to-country" agreements that are to be concluded with all nations in which the state has a hand in the nuclear building programme. One with South Korea has already been concluded. Another with France is on the way.

So what is going on here? The answer lies in how two men who feel aggrieved and share a similar view on how they should lead have found each other and begun to tether the destiny of their nations to one another.

Putin's and Zuma's relationship appears to have sprung from their encounters at the annual summit meetings of the Brics nations, the other partners being China, Brazil and India.

It is not difficult to speculate that the two share the sense that they are unjustly embattled - Zuma because of the criticism of his R260-million Nkandla residence and corruption allegations, and Putin because of the view that he is head of a kleptocracy and his isolation by the West over Ukraine.

Zuma and Putin have been seeing a lot of each other, meeting far more frequently than Zuma has met any other head of state in recent years. They have met at the Brics summits every year, but have added a smattering of other one-on-one encounters to the agenda on the sidelines of G20 summits and on state visits. The meetings go back four years.

In August 2010, Zuma visited Moscow for the first time as president when the man widely regarded as Putin's puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was ostensibly in power. The dialogue began with talk of a "strategic partnership" with South Africa.

Less than a year later, in July 2011, Zuma was back in Moscow. In June 2012, the two leaders met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, and again at the Brics summit in Durban in March last year.

At that meeting, Putin said Russia was ready to assist South Africa with the construction of nuclear power plants, adding that it would "provide a line of credit" - addressing a key concern that South Africa has about how such a deal might be financed.

These were his words: "Russia is offering South Africa not only to help with construction of nuclear power reactors, but also with the creation of the advanced nuclear power industry, including the extraction of raw materials, construction of [plants] and research reactors, design and domestic production of nuclear power equipment with Russian credit support."

It didn't stop there: "We are planning to set up a joint production of the Ansat light multipurpose helicopter," he said.

Then came the meeting last month at which, according to The Presidency: "President Putin welcomed the visit by President Zuma to Russia, and praised the good bilateral relations and co-operation that exist . He further encouraged both countries to work together in implementing the decisions that were taken last year during the state visit of South Africa to Russia."

Okay, let's rewind that tape: ". the decisions that were taken last year ."

That is the crux of it. Putin was meeting Zuma to gently cajole him into getting on with the implementation of what are now described as "decisions", presumably on the nuclear building and the helicopter programme.

So it ought not to have been surprising that, a few weeks later, the Department of Energy jumped the gun when it announced the "decision" to build the nuclear plants with Russia.