German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria this week, mainly to lobby for a pro-West stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, following brief stopovers in Dakar, Senegal and Abuja, Nigeria.
West Africa possesses major fossil fuel deposits which Scholz wants, needing to halt methane gas imports from Russia’s Nordstream pipeline.
Berlin’s vulnerability to Moscow gyrations, such as Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine (the first being Crimea in 2014), worsened dramatically once Western sanctions started to bite. Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel had profoundly misjudged Putin, encouraging more trade, investment and finance, hoping not only for gas supplies but a tighter Russia-European alliance.
It was a vain, naïve fantasy, given not only the easily-triggered Putin’s brutal, expansionary ambitions, backed by nuclear weapons, but also his fury over a blatantly…