What role, if any, is South Africa playing in Ukraine peace efforts?

Daily Maverick

13 hours ago

President Cyril Ramaphosa has been in direct telephonic contact with all the main players, but it is unclear just how significant a role South Africa can, or will play.
Before the big Ukraine war peace summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday, 15 August 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa had phone calls last week with the three key players, Putin, Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – who is, inexplicably, not invited to the Alaska meeting.
Were Ramaphosa's calls an indication that he and South Africa have a role to play in trying to end Russia's brutal war on Ukraine, now in its 42nd month? Or was this merely some sort of diplomatic name-dropping?
It's clear from the statement by his office that Ramaphosa and Trump mainly discussed tariffs and other aspects of the fraught South Africa-US relationship. Whether they also talked about Trump's peace efforts in Ukraine is unclear.
But peace was, of course, the main focus of Ramaphosa's calls with Putin on Thursday, 7 August and Zelensky on 8 August. The Kremlin statement said Putin had shared with Ramaphosa the main results of his conversation the day before in Moscow with Trump's special envoy on the peace process, Steven Witkoff.
Putin also complimented the African Peace Initiative, the delegation of Africans which Ramaphosa led in June 2023, meeting Zelensky in Kyiv and Putin in St Petersburg.
Ramaphosa's office later said Putin had asked to brief the President on the peace process and had 'expressed his recognition and appreciation for South Africa's involvement in advancing a peace process between Russia and Ukraine'.
Call with Zelensky, cryptic statements
A day later, Zelensky posted on X that his call with Ramaphosa had been 'a friendly and candid conversation about how to achieve real peace and stop the killings'.
He said Ramaphosa had shared details of his conversation with 'the Russian side' (Putin) and was adamant that 'the path to peace must begin with a ceasefire'.
Ramaphosa's office said Zelensky 'expressed his appreciation for South Africa's continued support in finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict'.
These statements were rather cryptic. Zelensky and Putin are poles apart on how to end this vicious war, yet both expressed appreciation for Ramaphosa's contributions to peace efforts.
So what did Ramaphosa say, what advice, if any, did he give? No one who really knows seems to be saying.
Jalel Harchaoui, a political scientist at the Royal United Services Institute, said he believed 'Ramaphosa couldn't possibly have said anything of relevance' in his phone calls with Zelensky and Putin.
And Ramaphosa's conversations with Zelensky and Putin were probably 'just standard fare', underlining his general narrative that he wants a ceasefire.
'And that does not mean over-concern about Ukraine's territorial integrity or the status of the occupied territories,' said Samuel Ramani, lecturer in politics and international relations at Oxford University (and author of the book, Russia in Africa).
'Moreover, South Africa wants to be seen as supportive of a key Trump initiative to help it deal with the US 30% import tariffs. So I think this is largely routine from him. I wouldn't read too much into it,' he said.
Peace talks in SA?
One source suggested, however, that a future round of the peace talks starting in Alaska could be held in South Africa. Was this discussed in the phone calls?
Dzvinka Kachur, co-founder of the Ukrainian Association in South Africa, noted that Ramaphosa had in the past spoken about the importance of Ukraine's territorial integrity, and so she hoped that he underscored this in his call with Putin.
It should also be noted that Zelensky made about 30 calls to international leaders last week to underscore his point that no Ukraine peace negotiations were possible without Ukraine in the room, and that a ceasefire should be unconditional, rather than conditioned on territorial concessions, as the US had initially suggested.
And it is understood that Putin also initiated the call to Ramaphosa.
Nevertheless Ramaphosa's phone conversations – and there have been others, as well as Zelensky's visit to Pretoria in April and Ramaphosa's in-person meeting with Putin at the BRICS+ summit in Kazan in October 2024 – do prompt the wider question of whether Ramaphosa and South Africa are playing any kind of real role in the Ukraine peace process, and if so what is the contribution, and what should it be?
Kachur noted that South Africa was playing a concrete role in the attempts to return some of the about 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and deported to Russia.
When Zelensky met Ramaphosa in Pretoria, he gave him a list of 400 abducted children who South Africa promised to try to return – but with no success and no visible progress so far.
African Peace Initiative
But Kachur believes there is much South Africa and Ramaphosa could still do for Africa and otherwise. The 2023 African Peace Initiative remained important, not only because of those direct impacts which Ramani mentioned – such as African food insecurity caused by Russia's blockade of Ukraine's grain exports.
It also remained important because the Ukraine war also had wider, deeper and longer impacts on principles important to Africa, such as restitution for war damages, accountability for aggression, reframing borders, and the future of the UN system.
She also noted that Russia's questionable presence in the Central African Republic, Mali and Niger through the Wagner private security company and its successor, the Africa Corps, had direct negative outcomes for the human rights, safety and security of the continent.
'The illegal, undocumented export of raw materials from these countries also provides Russia with the funding to continue the aggression. This is not bringing any benefits to the continent, but creates more trauma, undocumented weapons and suffering.'
And she believes that given its history and role as a champion of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, South Africa could and should be doing more to ensure nuclear safety – which has been jeopardised by Russia's military capture of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Perhaps Ramaphosa was conveying messages in his phone calls with Zelensky and Putin, said Steven Gruzd, head of the Africa-Russia project at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg.
'But I don't think South Africa is playing any major role in peacemaking between Ukraine and Russia.
'I don't see much room and evidence of us being a major peacemaker.
'The African Peace Initiative didn't really go very far. And there was not much follow-up. I don't think the money or the infrastructure has been put behind it to really make it a serious effort.'
Gruzd added though that South Africa had also 'taken measures to appear less one-sided (i.e. pro-Russian) in this conflict, the biggest being Zelensky's visit to SA in April'.
He thought that South Africa could play a bigger role in the Ukraine peace effort but that would require US support, which could in turn improve its poor relations with Washington.
And he noted that South Africa has attended most of Zelensky's international peace formula meetings (which began in 2023) and is working on two points of the formula – returning kidnapped Ukrainian children and exchanging prisoners of war.
Denys Reva, researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, said those meetings still continued at a lower level (mainly, it seems, on the return of the abducted children).
And although the African Peace Initiative did not seem to still exist as a formal grouping, South Africa had been engaging in different peace processes, promoting the values of the African peace plan, including advancing African interests and values.
For example, at the UN in New York in September 2024, South Africa joined the 'Friends for Peace' group backing the China-Brazil peace plan (which Zelensky strongly opposes because he believes it serves Moscow's interests mainly because it does not demand the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine, as his plan does).
Read more: War in Ukraine
'Realistically, no single initiative has yet succeeded in bringing peace,' Reva says. 'Pretoria seems to have shifted its emphasis towards humanitarian concerns, rather than positioning itself as a primary broker of a peace settlement.'
He added that 'SA's readiness to mediate the return of the children is an important humanitarian contribution amid stalled negotiations elsewhere. I think Pretoria has been fairly consistent in this regard, and I think that both Kyiv and Moscow probably welcome South African efforts.'
And he said both Kyiv and Moscow also see South Africa as crucial in improving their relations with Africa.
Ramani said: 'I'm not hearing too much about South Africa being an influential interlocutor.'
He added that other countries of the Global South were playing a greater peace role, citing the United Arab Emirates, which he said had hoped to host Friday's summit between Trump and Putin.
However, he also added that South Africa was probably doing its best to ensure that the voice of Africa was heard in the Ukraine peace process, and that this was important because the war had significant implications for food security, supply chains and many other things that impacted Africa's socioeconomic development so profoundly. DM