More than $15bn worth of exports that sustain a critical part of South Africa’s manufacturing industry is on the line as Pretoria battles the fallout from a US accusation that it covertly supplied arms to Russia.
President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted this week that South Africa has not been “drawn into a contest between global powers” as he promised an inquiry into fresh claims that arms had been placed on to a sanctioned Russian vessel at a Cape Town naval base last year.
But a sharp sell-off in South Africa’s currency and government bonds over the country’s most serious foreign policy crisis in years has pointed to the lopsided economic stakes for a country that on average sent less than 1 per cent of its exports to Russia over the past five years.