TOM EATON | Russian roulette: what if Putin had stubbornly decided to come to SA?

Russia’s announcement that Vladimir Putin won’t be coming to South Africa next month will be a relief to Cyril Ramaphosa, his cabinet and pretty much anyone whose bank account contains South African Rands. But nobody is happier right now than the cluster of minor officials at Waterkloof Air Force Base who, until Wednesday, had been drawing straws to see which of them would be redeployed as liaison to an army tractor depot in eastern Siberia.

According to reports, Putin’s decision not to come to South Africa next month was reached “by mutual agreement”, like when you beg a criminal not to hit you with a brick and he agrees because at least you asked nicely and perhaps you’ll be useful as a character witness should he ever get caught, or at least make him look like a legitimate leader with influence outside Belarus.

Indeed, the narrative of a “mutual agreement” between two calm, mature heads of state was in stark contrast to Ramaphosa’s secret affidavit, revealed earlier in the week, in which he worried that arresting Putin would qualify as a declaration of war against Russia.

Ramaphosa has been to Ukraine. He knows how nightmarish a war with Putin’s Russia can be. He can’t say it, of course, because the whole point of historical solidarity is to honour the past by denying the present, but he knows. The last thing he wants is for Russian submarines to start launching cruise missiles at the ANC’s headquarters in Durban. Well, perhaps the second-last thing. But still.

And yet I can’t help wondering: what was the plan if the Russian autocrat threw his blood-stained toys out of the diplomatic cot and insisted that he was coming all the same?

Which is why, as he made clear in his affidavit, he never had any intention of arresting Putin.

And yet I can’t help wondering: what was the plan if the Russian autocrat threw his blood-stained toys out of the diplomatic cot and insisted that he was coming all the same?

If things got very hairy, I suppose there was always the Mysterious Third Party gambit, whereby Putin could have been whisked away straight after the Brics plenary session by subcontracted heavies not technically in the employ of either Russia or SA.

I know things have been a bit testy in Mother Russia lately, but money still talks and I’m sure that the Kremlin could have put a couple of thousand Wagner hard boys at Beitbridge within 24 hours of Putin’s threatened arrest, ready to make a high-speed dash down the N1 to extract their paymaster, while the whole SANDF was suddenly and entirely coincidentally ordered to attend an emergency seminar in Cape Town on the importance of regular flossing.

This, however, would have been hard to organise and harder to explain later. Which is why I suspect Ramaphosa’s fallback plan since the start was the Bashir Slide-N-Glide, developed by Jacob Zuma and the Guptas and recently perfected by the Emirati royal family in the Eastern Cape: take Putin to the Waterkloof cafeteria, tell him that they’re going to arrest him shortly but they’re first going to take a 5-hour lunch break so he better not go anywhere or even think about wandering out to that fully fuelled, unmarked Ilyushin currently taxiing closer with its passenger door open; switch off the radar, wait ‘til the plane is over the DRC, and then release a statement expressing shock and promising to establish a task team to investigate how such a security lapse was allowed to happen.

In the end, that security lapse would be given a face, a rank and a name. The short straw would be drawn, and a bright young officer who was going places — or at least a dull, middle-aged officer who was going to the vending machine to get smokes — would be hung out to dry, and that would be that.

Now, none of that needs to happen. Putin isn’t coming to South Africa, and nobody at Waterkloof is going to the 52nd Motorised Tractor Cavalry Regiment in Khabarovsk.

Yes, we can all breathe a little easier.