The former President alleged a toxin had been administered by one of his wives at the behest of the CIA. Karyn Maughan and Kirsten Pearson, in their 2022 book, Nuclear, suggest the deal was clinched after Zuma received medical treatment in Russia for poisoning. If completed, at a cost of £50 billion, the plants would have provided 23% of South Africa’s energy - and given the Russians an effective stranglehold over the country’s economy. Jacob Zuma, the disgraced former President currently facing criminal charges over alleged corruption in a 1999 arms deal, commissioned Russia’s Rosatom energy company to build eight nuclear plants in 2014. The Russians have not been slow to capitalise on it. They may have forgotten the USSR’s egalitarian mantras in their rush to become wealthy, but nostalgia still lingers. Many of the ageing elites studied at Russian or Bloc country universities. The old guard of the ruling African National Congress, who still haunt every crevice of government here, have not forgotten that Russian support was crucial in their 80-year anti-apartheid struggle, finally won in a negotiated settlement in 1994. But the row has served to remind us what drives the ruling African National Congress’s policy towards Russia and its allies: ideology and nostalgia, self-interest and greed. There were no legal grounds for refusing the Nord docking permission. Not happening, said Vincent Magwenya, spokesperson for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The pair accused the oligarch, allegedly an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, of being an “enabler” in the invasion of Ukraine. A couple of weeks ago, both Cape Town’s Mayor and the Premier of the Western Cape - members of the opposition - demanded that Alexey Mordashov’s vessel be refused entry to South African territorial waters, where it was seeking sanctuary. It was a Russian oligarch’s superyacht scudding towards Cape Town that brought global attention to South Africa’s refusal to condemn Russian aggression.
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