For the mandarins of the SA Communist Party, Vladimir Putin ghosting the Brics summit is a terrible disappointment, like when your idol is coming to perform for the first time in decades and you’ve stood in line for a week to get your ticket, and then he cancels because he’s got a cold or he’s wanted for kidnapping at least 16,000 Ukrainian children as part of a low-key genocide.
Of course, I don’t expect the SACP to talk publicly about that last part. The abduction by Russia of thousands of children — at least 16,000 since February last year, with some claiming over 300,000 since 2014 — is a verifiable fact, falling under the legal definition of a war crime designed to reduce the population of a neighbouring country; but nobody lets facts or a spot of child trafficking get in the way of ideological solidarity these days.
To be clear, I agree with Putin’s supporters that the International Criminal Court, which issued the warrant for Putin’s arrest, is deeply flawed. If it was half as objective and effective as its backers claim, its holding cells would be a who’s who of current and former world leaders, with George W Bush, Tony Blair and Barack Obama awaiting trial for war crimes, Xi Xinping charged with genocide against China’s Uyghurs, and a number of Israeli politicians and officials had up for the crimes of apartheid and persecution.
But what Putin’s backers refuse to understand is that the ICC’s alleged bias and the glaring hypocrisy of the West don’t absolve Putin of his crimes. All it means is that he’s as filthy as the people they abhor in Washington and London. Hypocrites are, by definition, truth-tellers: their hypocrisy is premised on that fact that they’re pointing out one truth while refusing to point out another.
What Putin’s backers refuse to understand is that the ICC’s alleged bias and the glaring hypocrisy of the West don’t absolve Putin of his crimes. All it means is that he’s as filthy as the people they abhor in Washington and London.
This is why I don’t dispute the SACP’s right exist. We need a voice that will always speak up against the brutal excesses of capitalism, even if that voice comes from a group of absurd hypocrites resolutely insisting that they are a valid and legitimate part of the SA democratic system while refusing to contest elections.
In their defence, I would also add that they tend to practice what they preach. Whereas their idol, Putin, lives in lavish wealth, with almost none of the profits of his gangster-capitalist state reaching Russia’s low income majority, the SACP controls the means of production — Blade Nzimande — and shares his ministerial salary as best it can.
Still, I understand how hero worship can addle even the most serious political minds. And this week, after Putin cancelled his South African holiday, the confusion was palpable.
On the one hand, explained SACP leader Solly Mapaila, the decisions taken by Putin “demonstrated understanding and show the highest level of statesmanship”.
On the other, he added, it was just as well, since going to war with Russia would have been a disaster.
“Russia has no less than 40,000 nuclear warheads,” he said. “Who can touch such a country? So from a military and development perspective, Russia is as much a warhead as the US. No-one wants to get into a war with such a country.”
In other words: if you have the power to kill everyone on Earth 100 times over, and you’ve recently committed a vast crime against children, and someone wants to hold you to account, but they don’t because you might turn them to a radioactive sheet of glass, and you decide not to force them to force you to threaten them with annihilation, that, according to the SACP, is “the highest level of statesmanship”.
It sounds completely unhinged, but I suppose that’s fandom for you. If you’re willing to ignore 16,000 stolen children, ignoring reality is a doddle.
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