Speaking at the University of Pretoria on Monday, Blinken said the US sees the 54 nations of Africa as “equal partners” in efforts such as combating climate change, recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and “strengthening the free and open international order.”
“Our strategy is rooted in the recognition that sub-Saharan Africa is a major geopolitical force - one that has shaped our past, is shaping our present, and will shape our future,” Blinken said. “It’s a strategy that reflects the region’s complexity, its diversity, its agency; and one that focuses on what we will do with African nations and peoples, not for African nations and peoples.”
That past, however, includes the importation of roughly 400,000 African slaves before the US banned the international slave trade in 1808. Later, the US supported the spread of European imperialism across the continent and meddled extensively in its anti-colonial struggles, including orchestrating the assassination of the Congo’s first independent leader, Patrice Lumumba, and supporting the invasion of Angola by apartheid-ruled South Africa. More recently, US-trained African officers have developed a habit of overthrowing their governments.
Prior to his Monday speech, Blinken met with his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor. The government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has refused to follow Washington’s lead in condemning Russia’s special operation in Ukraine and adopted a neutral, non-aligned position, and a major goal of Blinken’s tour is to pull such nations back toward the US sphere of influence.
Instead, at a news briefing after their meeting, Pandor criticized Washington for its singular focus on Ukraine.
“We should be equally concerned at what is happening to the people of Palestine, as we are with what is happening to the people of Ukraine,” she said.
South Africa, which only emerged from white supremacist apartheid rule in 1994 after decades of struggle by the country’s Black African majority, has strongly supported the Palestinian struggle in the decades since. Indeed, the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is inspired by the international anti-apartheid boycott of the late 20th century.
Speaking before the Conference of Palestinian Heads of Mission in Africa last month, Pandor condemned Israel for “committing crimes of Apartheid and persecution against Palestinians.”
On Sunday night, a ceasefire ended three days of fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces that had begun with an unannounced Israeli airstrike in central Gaza City that blew the side off an apartment block, killing 10 and wounding dozens more. As of Monday, the death toll had risen to 41, all of them in Gaza. The violence came about 16 months after an 11-day war that killed nearly 260 Palestinians in Gaza and 13 Israelis.
When US President Joe Biden visited the West Bank city of Ramallah last month, he was greeted with protests accusing him of “ignoring the Palestinian issue.” His trip was widely seen as attempting to shore up support for US policies against Iran and to convince the Saudis to lower oil prices, not at halting the radical pro-settlement policies of the Israeli government. Shortly after his visit, Jerusalem authorized a massive new expansion of housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Blinken’s trip will also take him to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two nations that have sat on the brink of war for months as each accuses the other of backing proxy forces in the DRC’s North Kivu Province. In addition, Blinken’s visit to Kinshasa will come just weeks after one by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited the neighboring Republic of the Congo, as well as Uganda, Ethiopia, and Egypt.
"We have our principle, our long-term relations, which do not depend on the current global situation and so, apparently, our work in the sphere of ties with African countries will expand,” Lavrov told Sputnik at a press conference in Kampala during the trip. “But given the current situation and the current activities undertaken by the West, objectively the role of the African continent will grow in our work.”
Correction: a previous version of this story said Foreign Minister Lavrov had visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not the Republic of the Congo.