On June 16, South Africans found themselves in a circus tent of derision, with one clown comment after another by government spokespersons sending the international community reeling with laughter.
Instead of sacredly commemorating the sacrifices made by the youth of 1976, we are weeping at the mockery that our government is making of South Africa. The gross incompetence that surrounds the SA security contingent to Ukraine and Russia is on full display for all to see.
Over the 30 years of democracy, we have had five presidents and more than 100 presidential trips to foreign nations. The chaos around the flight to Warsaw is either a national intelligence-planned operation or it is a case of gross incompetence.
To claim foreign interference or racism is a convenient and crude diversion. South African exceptionalism reached its sell-by date a long time ago and we should quietly join the queue and do business the right way.
Issues like not having flight path clearances to the two key meeting destinations conveniently caused the media contingent to be grounded in Warsaw, unable to provide coverage. Things like this don’t just go wrong. Every aspect of this chartered flight has become suspect. The president has been in Switzerland since June 14 to address an ILO Summit in Geneva.
On June 15, he travelled to Warsaw for a courtesy visit with President Duda of Poland. Later, he travelled by train to Kyiv, with the plan that the security and media crew would join that journey. It is at this point that things appear to be somewhat out of order.
Why is the head of President Ramaphosa’s protection services, Wally Rhoode, not on the same flight and train as the president? Why was he on a chartered flight, separated from the president? Who managed the president’s security detail in one of the most high-profile and dangerous diplomatic missions ever conducted by South Africa and its AU partners?
Why is he dressed in tracksuit pants and other casual clothes, when he is on duty and on a diplomatic mission and about to meet his foreign counterparts?
The high number of security people that went on this flight is also a suspicious development. One hundred additional security service personnel and 14 media people were on this flight. Has this ever been the case with any other foreign trip any of our presidents have undertaken?
Help this make sense. The president’s security arrangement from Geneva to Warsaw to Kyiv and Saint Petersburg would have been classified as top secret. So someone else in Poland also had those details? Who suddenly provided the on-the-ground security for the president in Warsaw and for the rest of his trip?
The most baffling part is that when the South African embassy in Poland briefed the president of the drama unfolding at Chopin Airport, why did he not intervene immediately? Why was there no statement by South Africa if dirty play by the Polish government or any other authority was suspected? Instead, the president just quietly leaves for Kyiv on a train, his signature silence drifting in the air of circus tent South Africa.
Everything about this chaotic state of affairs says the president did not want his own country’s media to be present at both the Kyiv and Saint Petersburg meetings. The security personnel on the charted flight, the photocopied documents and the “sabotage and racism claims” all appear to be badly crafted decoys.
To what end one may ask? Prof Jeremy Seekings, in a recent interview, said: ”This is theatre.” Has our president knowingly participated in a Putin-orchestrated performance, a Polish plot or a presidency puppet show? We wait with bated breath for the answers.
* Lorenzo A. Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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