Umsebenzi Online Volume 24, Number 2, 23 June 2025
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Volume 24, Number 2, 23 June 2025 |
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Red AlertUkraine – a history lesson |
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Ronnie Kasrils
There is an uncanny repetition in the line-up of Nato forces against Russia today, centred on the Ukraine front, and stretching 1,500 km from the Baltic to the Black Sea. That front was previously breached on 22 June 1941 in Nazi Germany’s infamous invasion of the Soviet Union. That ill-fated fantasy of Adolph Hitler to wipe out communism, and to subjugate the world to fascist rule, ended in Nazi Germany’s inglorious defeat on 8 May 1945, 80 years ago, primarily at the hands of the Red Army.
Russia has been invaded many times in history at incredible cost to its people, and does not intend to allow that to happen again. Its partnership with China and the Global South against Western imperialism is invaluable for humanity’s sake.
Celebrating victory over Nazi Germany
The 80th anniversary of the epic victory over fascist Germany has just been celebrated in Moscow and the West. The elitist ruling class version in the West was a Nato event, where US President Donald Trump claimed that his America won the war. That’s the Hollywood version. Their Ukrainian puppet Zelensky features as an inflatable hero against the Russian peril. A visitor from another planet would not have realised Hitler and Nazi Germany had once been the common foe of World War 2 Allies – East and West.
As the Western imperialists attempt to rewrite the history books, the current rise of fascism is being undermined, and their war-mongering grows. In contrast, the celebrations in Moscow were authentic and supported by countries such as Belarus and China, which had carried a major wartime burden in that victory.
Zelensky’s visit to South Africa
Shortly before these events, Zelensky was in South Africa, where unfortunately such misunderstandings of history were prevalent.
In welcoming him, President Ramaphosa stated:
“We acknowledge with great appreciation the support we received from Ukraine during our liberation struggle. We recall that a number of exiled South Africans received training and education in Ukraine.” (24 April, 2025)
Amidst protests over Zelensky’s visit, the General Secretary of the SACP, Cde Solly Mapaila, stated: “Zelensky does not deserve to be in South Africa. We are recognising a man who has turned his country into a meat grinder, sending young men into the frontline for something he could have avoided. He has lost legitimacy in Ukraine and world affairs.”
President Ramaphosa’s statement needs to be corrected.
The Ukraine of today is an anti-communist, Russophobe proxy of Nato, where Nazi collaborators are celebrated. It is by no means the same state that assisted our liberation movement and many others from Africa, Asia and Latin America, most notably in the people’s victories of Cuba, Vietnam and Southern Africa. Neither is Ukraine the country that was part of the Soviet Union in the war against Hitler.
The Ukraine that provided generous support and training for the ANC was Soviet Ukraine—part of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This was a communist-led republic that, along with others, played a key role in the internationalist policies of the Soviet Union; a very different entity to Zelensky’s Ukraine.
To put it bluntly, welcoming Zelensky and thanking his government for Soviet-era support is like thanking West Germany for the internationalist solidarity that came from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) — an entirely different society with a different political project.
The Ukrainian embassy in South Africa cynically asserts that the ANC should acknowledge gratitude for Ukraine’s role in supporting our struggle against apartheid.
Formation of the Soviet Union
Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922, along with 14 other Soviet republics. The Soviet Union was formed as a consequence of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917. Soviet Ukraine, along with the other Soviet republics, made remarkable advances in science, education, and industry and played a key role in the USSR’s broader internationalist agenda.
This was the Ukraine that hosted and trained ANC cadres, along with those from FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front), SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation), MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola), ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union), and others. From the early 1960s, military and academic institutions in Soviet Ukraine, along with other Soviet republics, welcomed liberation fighters. We were welcomed not as recipients of aid but as comrades in a global struggle.
The support we received was not from a nationalist state but from a socialist internationalist project grounded in anti-colonial solidarity. It is important to recall that at this time Western governments backed the apartheid regime.
For the record, military training and academic education of ANC/SACP cadres in the Soviet Union resulted from initial proposals from the SACP and a formal request by Oliver Tambo on behalf of the ANC to Soviet authorities in 1962. The first group of forty Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) comrades received military training in Moscow in 1963, among them Cdes Chris Hani, Archie Sibeko and Mavuso Msimang. Two groups, approximately 150 each, received training in Odessa in 1964 and 1965. Among them were Cdes Joe Modise, Moses Mabhida and Joe Jele.
Over the years the training for MK was centred on the Moscow district, with specialisations in time for naval officers in Baku (then Azerbaijan SSR), air force pilots in Frunze Academy (Tajikistan SSR), political commissars in Minsk (Belarus SSR) and Tashkent SSR.
From 1969 a major training area for African movements was in the Russian speaking Crimea, at the extensive Perevalnoye base, where the terrain was more suitable for southern Africans.
Further afield, countries such as Cuba, China, North Korea and Vietnam received huge support in their liberation struggles, as had communist parties and movements from the time of the Communist International (Comintern) in the 1920’s. That notably included Republican Spain in their efforts for survival against General Franco’s fascist rebellion in the 1930’s – supported by Hitler and Mussolini, Italy’s fascist leader, in a dress rehearsal for the world war to come. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) received Soviet support along with the other liberation movements from the 1960’s.
The decisions to recognise such movements and their needs, was made by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Funds were provided from the state budget, and the training was the responsibility of the Soviet Defence Ministry.
Ukraine’s trajectory since 1991
With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state. What followed was the rapid expansion of neoliberal capitalism, deepening inequality, political instability, and increasing alignment with Nato. Nationalist and even openly fascist currents—long suppressed in Soviet times—resurfaced.
In 2014, the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych, which strove to maintain a neutral position between Russia and the West, was overthrown in the Maidan coup backed by the United States and key European powers, and driven in part by far-right and ultranationalist forces. US official, Victoria Nuland, boasted that Washington had spent over $6 billion in preparing that “regime change”.
The most notorious example of the rise of ultranationalist forces is the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary unit formed in 2014 that openly embraced neo-Nazi symbols and ideology. The post-coup government embraced an aggressive anti-Russian stance, began purging Soviet symbols, and moved decisively toward Nato integration. Kiev unleashed a vicious attack on the Russian speaking and defiant Donbass region, in which 14,000 lives were lost during merciless bombardment over eight years preceding 2022.
It was this series of events that ignited the conflict that continues to devastate Ukraine and destabilise the region. This was the context in which through popular plebiscite, the two people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, declared independence, and subsequently, as with Crimea, were incorporated into the Russian Federal Republic. Crimea had been Russian for centuries, and had sustained an Anglo-French invasion in 1853-56, for its strategic importance.
Zelensky was elected in 2019 on a peace platform but swiftly shifted to support Nato ambitions. His pro-war regime outlawed opposition parties, closed independent media, and rehabilitated Nazi collaborators from World War 2 as national heroes. The ideological shift was not just political; it also involved the rewriting of history.
No to the distortion of history
The Soviet Union sustained 27 million killed during the Second World War. In contrast the USA and Britain each suffered 400,000 deaths. Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union brought devastation to Ukraine as elsewhere. In our Odessa training our instructors warned us about the danger of collaborators. They were referring to the pro-Nazi Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), led by Stepan Bandera, which participated in pogroms and ethnic cleansing, and was involved in the killing of Jews, Poles, and communists. Today, elements of this history have been whitewashed, and these forces are celebrated by the Ukrainian state.
This whitewashing is part of a broader ideological project that seeks to position Ukraine as a bulwark against Russia and a loyal outpost of the West. This ideological project also erases the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in defeating the Nazis. This belies what Winston Churchill, a vicious imperialist and anti-communist, acknowledged in a speech to the House of Commons on 2 August 1944: “It is”, he said, “the Russian army that has done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army”.
What the Western powers wanted from the war, as Churchill once put it, was Hitler in the grave and the Soviet Union on the operating table. An early reference to regime change. The same Churchill had notoriously stated during the Russian civil war of 1918-22 between Whites and Reds: “We must strangle the Bolshevik baby in its crib.” The attempt miserably failed even though Britain, Canada, France, Japan, Poland, the USA, and Sweden were part of a 14 countries invasion in support of the White counter-revolutionaries.
Nato’s Expansion
Russia’s decision to mount a military response to the escalating situation in Ukraine cannot be understood outside the context of Nato’s decades-long expansion, the 2014 coup, and Ukraine’s position as a Nato proxy. It is a question of Russia’s survival or being dismembered. If Russia had not mounted that response, it would have been invaded sooner or later. The Russian President, Putin, had attempted to find a political solution to the growing Ukraine crisis through the Minsk Agreements of 2014/15, but this came to nought. German and French leaders have admitted they had pretended to go along with Putin’s initiative but were actually playing for time, to allow Kiev to strengthen its military ability. US historians such as John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs have meticulously explained the Russian position. That involved Ukraine recognising the Donbass as an autonomous region with Russian language rights and customs, a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine. Had Kiev accepted those conditions, there would have been no war. But the Western powers pressed Kiev to fight on – to the last Ukrainian.
We must not permit historical amnesia or geopolitical opportunism to undermine our principled stance. Our leaders owe it to the memory of those who trained and supported us in the Soviet Union, and were with us as advisers in Angola to tell the truth.
It is not Zelensky’s Ukraine that stood with us in the trenches of exile. It was the Soviet Union, including Soviet Ukraine, that was part of a global anti-imperialist movement. Noting this is not just a matter of historical accuracy. It is a matter of political integrity. It is a matter of correctly positioning our country for the huge dangers pointing to Word War Three. To prevent such a catastrophe, the firm unity of the anti-imperialist global forces is an absolute necessity. South Africa’s place must be firmly within that unity.
Cde Kasrils is a veteran SACP, ANC and MK leader and an author
The revolutionary relevance of African Liberation Day
Ben Martins
Africa Day, originally known as Africa Freedom Day or African Liberation Day, marks its founding by 31 independent countries of the Organisation of African Unity, on May 25, 1963.
At present, the African Union (AU) consists of 55 sovereign member states that act under the concept of “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena.”
The AU’s objectives include strengthening unity and solidarity, developing cooperation between African nations, protecting the independence and members’ territorial integrity, eliminating all forms of colonialism, preventing interference in internal affairs, and settling conflict in a peaceful way.
Africa continues to strive towards freedom from underdevelopment, conflict and war.
The AU commemorated the 62nd anniversary of its founding with a call for justice, unity and progress.
In claiming Africa’s future, revolutionaries seek not only to commemorate its past, but to mobilise and march forward, as internationalism is not an act of charity but a revolutionary duty that transcends borders. As a continent, African countries share the same destiny.
In West Africa, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) — Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — ended their neo-colonial relationship with France and withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
The AES was created as a mutual defence pact in September 2023, and was formalised into a confederation on July 6, 2024 to expand cooperation in defence, economic and social sectors.
Africa’s last colony, Western Sahara, led by the Polisario Front, seeks to end its occupation by Morocco through self-determination and armed resistance.
In Southern Africa, an absolute monarch crushes and bans attempts at fostering democracy. In doing so, he reveals the unmasked face of tyranny.
Swaziland is a country in the throes of severe political and economic crisis.
King Mswati presides over a nation in distress, wracked by inequality and wanton repression. The king’s lavish lifestyle stands in stark contrast to the poverty of the 1.2 million people he rules over.
Political parties are banned. Freedom of speech, association, and assembly are denied.
Political opponents are regularly jailed, driven into exile, or assassinated — like Thulani Maseko, a respected human rights lawyer and outspoken critic of the monarchy.
With regard to Swaziland’s neighbouring country, South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa recently led a Government of National Unity delegation to the White House.
The engagement with American President Donald Trump revealed that democracy ends where the economic interests of the Military-Industrial Complex begin.
South Africa, having taken Israel to the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide, exemplified the moral leadership that most Arab and Islamic countries, most European Union countries, and the United States desperately need.
Israel’s continuing wanton genocide in Gaza reveals the hollowness of the United Nations Security Council’s pretension to support international law.
In conclusion, a question that cartographers have debated for centuries still remains relevant for Africa on the 62nd anniversary of Africa Day:
Can anyone accurately depict a three-dimensional spherical world on a flat surface and have a precise representation?
The Mercator map projection is the most lingering lie about Africa and the most common version of the world map.
It shrinks Africa and much of the Global South, while disproportionately enlarging dominant superpower-controlled regions of the world.
Europe, for example, is portrayed as larger than South America, whereas it is actually half its size.
This is contrary to the Gall-Peters ‘equal area’ map projection, which more accurately represents the size of the African continent.
According to the Gall-Peters projection, the US, China, and India can all fit within Africa!
The Mercator projection is Eurocentric. Its continued use is inherently political.
The AU needs to be particular about how Africa is represented on the world map.
Sovereignty at the speed of satellites: Why the Starlink Directive must be rejected
Buti Manamela
A quiet but dangerous precedent is taking shape in South Africa ’s communications policy. Disguised as a technical intervention, the proposed policy directive by Minister Solly Malatsi on satellite services opens the door for multinationals –most notably Elon Musk ’s Starlink – to operate in our market without meeting the hard-fought requirements of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). If adopted, it will mark the most significant retreat from transformation since 1994 –a silent but strategic concession to capital at the expense of national sovereignty and historical redress.
At issue is the Individual Electronic Communications Network Services (IECNS) licence, a critical regulatory mechanism that requires potential network providers to be 30% Black-owned, as per South Africa ’s ICT sector codes. Starlink ’s refusal to comply with this requirement stalled its entry into the country – until now.
Malatsi ’s policy directive, published in the Government Gazette on 21 May 2025, proposes an inquiry into opening new licensing windows, which could potentially allow companies to apply under alternative conditions, including an “equity equivalent” programme. This, on paper, may seem neutral. But in practice, it is a deliberate sidestep—a shortcut for multinationals unwilling to partner with historically disadvantaged South Africans.
A Trojan Horse for Deregulation
The proposed inquiry, as outlined in the directive, frames this as a response to the 2019 Competition Commission Data Services Market Inquiry, which identified high data prices and lack of universal internet access as major barriers to inclusion. But the report never recommended weakening equity conditions or bypassing empowerment laws. If anything, it urged structural reform to break market concentration and promote real competition, not deregulated access for global monopolies.
Let us be clear: Starlink is not a neutral player. It is owned by SpaceX and controlled by Elon Musk, who has publicly ridiculed South Africa ’s transformation laws. His companies have a long record of resisting unionisation, avoiding taxation, and exploiting regulatory loopholes globally. To bend our laws for his entry is not innovation—it is submission.
The Department now claims this move isn ’t “tailor-made” for Starlink. Yet the timing, framing, and political choreography suggest otherwise. The proposal invites public comment until late June, but if left unchallenged, it will erode the principle that those who profit in our economy must also contribute to its transformation.
Economic freedom or economic exceptionalism?
We must resist the narrative that empowerment laws are the obstacle to digital inclusion. It is not BEE that prevents rural schools from accessing the internet—it is capital ’s refusal to invest where it cannot extract maximum profit. Starlink ’s business model is built for remote markets – but only where licensing allows unfettered access. When confronted with ownership obligations, Musk walks away.
Let ’s not forget: over 72% of South Africa ’s agricultural land is still owned by whites, and the top 10% of earners receive 65% of national income, while the bottom 50% receive just 5% (World Inequality Report, 2021). These inequalities are not accidental—they are the legacy of racial capitalism and colonial dispossession.
If we begin to dilute a transformation law in one sector, where does it stop? Equity equivalents were introduced with strict conditions, not as an escape hatch. The suggestion that “choice” must exist between direct ownership and corporate-defined equivalence undermines the very foundation of our economic justice framework.
The return of silent capture
This is not just a policy debate – it is a political one. Parliament is right to summon Malatsi to explain the implications of this directive. The ANC Youth League and the ANC NEC Communications Subcommittee have already raised red flags. As Cde Nkenke Kekana rightly noted, only a holistic overhaul of the law – not a clever regulatory detour – could legally enable what this directive hints at.
We are witnessing the return of silent capture – not through corruption, but through ideological drift, where market confidence trumps transformation, and foreign capital is placed above constitutional mandates. The danger is not only in this instance but in the precedent it sets.
The same logic is creeping into other sectors: calls to suspend employment equity for “skilled” migrants, whispers of rolling back localisation for procurement, and efforts to repeal sections of the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA). Each time, the argument is the same: redress is inconvenient. But we cannot build a democratic economy by postponing justice.
Reclaiming economic sovereignty
South Africa ’s National Development Plan (NDP 2030) commits to a just, inclusive, and transformed economy. The Digital Economy Masterplan envisions universal connectivity—but not at the cost of surrendering ownership to unaccountable billionaires. The Expropriation Bill, the Land Court Bill, and the pending Wealth Tax proposal are all steps toward restoring the means of production to those long excluded from them.
If the goal is digital inclusion, let us build state-owned broadband infrastructure, invest in public Wi-Fi networks, and expand municipal fibre rollouts. Let us support worker-owned cooperatives in the digital economy. Let us demand that every global player complies fully with our transformation laws—no exceptions.
To open the door for Starlink under weakened equity conditions is not digital progress. It is economic recolonisation.
Sovereignty cannot be streamed
In the final analysis, this is about sovereignty. Will we let the likes of Elon Musk decide the terms of engagement in our own economy? Or will we assert, with constitutional clarity and political courage, that transformation is non-negotiable?
We cannot stream sovereignty at the speed of satellites. It must be built, protected, and advanced—brick by brick, byte by byte, policy by policy. The Starlink saga is not about internet access. It is about who owns the future. And we cannot afford to sell it off, one directive at a time.
Cde Manamela is an SACP Central Committee member, former YCLSA National Secretary, ANC NEC member and Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training
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