Hopewell Chin’ono, Special Correspondent
On Saturday evening I explained how UNDIPLOMATIC it was for the African delegation that was on a peace mission to Ukraine and Russia to speak about how commodity prices have gone up in Africa to people who are losing lives including children daily in both Ukraine and Russia.
The Ukrainian Presidential Adviser said the same thing here a few days later saying that the African Presidents were more concerned about themselves. It was a massive tactical error by our guys.
You might discover how difficult life is without your wife or husband when they have left you, the cooking, the cleaning, the bills etc.
But you don’t pronounce that when you are negotiating for their return, you talk about things that appeal to them, how much you miss them, how much you love them, how much they mean the world to you.
It is weird for one to imagine that someone who is losing lives daily will stop a war because the price of bread in Tembisa has gone up.
African leaders should have talked and focused their messaging mainly about how Africans are hurt to see children and other civilians being killed, and historic property being destroyed.
They should have made it ONLY about Russia and Ukraine, and not about Africa’s benefits.
Everyone knew that Africa’s failure to provide food for itself meant that the war would make things worse since more than half of Africa relies on wheat from Russia and Ukraine.
But you don’t use that as a negotiating tool! To make things worse, Russian President Vladimir Putin disrespected the African Presidents by saying their assertion of prices going up due to disruptions from Ukraine was not correct.
He dismissed a documented fact that Ukraine provides food and fertilisers to the African continent saying only 3% of Africa’s wheat came from Ukraine.
The African Presidents were not saying anything false, Putin was just pissed off with them using it as a negotiation tool, just like Ukraine was.
It brings me to the critical question: Did the African leaders do some preliminary homework before setting off for Eastern Europe?
When you are a peace negotiator, you engage both sides separately and get some preliminary agreements first, and then go to finalize on those areas of mutual agreement hoping to get Russia and Ukraine to agree on more things when you meet them.
Clearly this was not done, or if it was done, it was not done properly, reducing the whole trip to a public relations stunt which unfortunately backfired.
The African leaders got nothing that seemed to have been agreed on by both sides on their futile trip which had added drama when a South African plane was detained in Poland.
President Putin clearly is not interested in the African negotiation dimension, neither is Ukraine. Africa was clearly out of its depth and shouldn’t have gone there so unplanned in the first place.
So what was that all about if not a public relations stunt?
Africans are gullible, they emotionally believe in the pro-African Russian propaganda without interrogating it, it is all based on a Cold War brotherhood with the USSR which used Africa as a proxy to fight America, the same America used Africa to fight the USSR propping up dictatorships like Mobutu Sese Seko.
You see, the gullibility is self-evident here on social media where many Africans declare their undying love for Vladimir Putin instead of positioning the continent as a power house and not a beggar of cheap wheat and fertilisers, things that can be grown and manufactured on the continent if it were not for incompetent and corrupt leadership.
African leaders are not different either frothier citizens who compete for delivering undying love for Putin, they fall for the same propaganda and it seems this trip was hinged on that basis.
Dear Africans, To Russia we are just a mere a proxy and not an important cog in its foreign policy beyond extractive economics and solidarity when it is needed.
We take Gold and other minerals to Russia in exchange for bread and fertilisers, how pathetic is that?
Clever African leaders like President Paul Kagame understood this that is why they probably stayed away.
The Egyptian and Congolese Presidents sent representatives because they were properly advised about the futility of this trip, they showed up without being there.
Did President Yoweri Museveni really have COVID-19 or it was a very sly move to avoid making the trip and giving it a wide berth? Only he knows.
If this was a genuine African Initiative, where was the Chairman of the African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat.
If India and China had gone to Ukraine and Russia, they would have gotten a different type of respect.
I don’t blame Russia and Ukraine, it is very difficult and near impossible to respect a man who comes into your home pleading his hunger first in order to solve a conflict in your home.
More like, “…please reconcile with your wife, my kids who used to eat in your home are starving because of your marital problem.”
Why can’t you look after your own kids, why can’t Africa make its own fertilisers and grow its own food instead of importing 85% of its food from outside the continent?
It is difficult to respect a man who can’t even feed his own family.
I know some don’t want to hear this truth, but it is what it is!
There is another angle to this visit, some African countries picked sides.
The Ukrainian representative was denied an audience in Namibia, and the interviews done by the State broadcaster with her were pulled off air.
With such disrespect, how could Ukraine trust an African delegation to be fair?
How would a country accused of sending weapons to Russia be expected to be a fair arbiter?
How could Russia stop its invasion on the basis of high prices in Africa?
Our emotional and insatiable love for propaganda removes us from asking these pertinent questions.
They get in the way of the narrative sold to us.
Both the West and the East are pursuing their objectives, Africa should do the same and not attempt to think that it can stop a war on the basis of hunger back home.
Hopewell Chin’ono is an award winning international journalist from Zimbabwe. He writes this article in his personal capacity.
