Many citizens are calling for peace in Ukraine. REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen
Opinion: As Russian troops began their advance on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, Inna Sovsun, a member of parliament, wrote that Russian soldiers were not just fighting the Ukraine army.
“We have an army of 40 million,” she wrote on her blog. “Putin is fighting the entire country.”
Her comments echoed those of Francois Pienaar in 1995, just before he held aloft the Webb Ellis Trophy following South Africa’s historic win over the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup.
An interviewer remarked that the Springboks had “tremendous support” with about 65 000 spectators at the game. Pienaar responded: “We didn’t have 65 000 South Africans, we had 43 million supporters.”
It is not just national pride that unites South Africa and Ukraine. Both countries share something unique – they are among the few countries that have voluntarily given up their nuclear weapons.
From the 1960s, South Africa started work to develop nuclear bombs. The apartheid regime was becoming increasingly isolated due to its racist policies. It saw nuclear weapons as a symbol of strength and a possible means of staying in power.
By the mid-1980s, the country had built six nuclear weapons. Smaller than the bombs that the Americans dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, they nevertheless had the potential to cause widespread devastation.
Towards the end of 1989, FW de Klerk became state president and took the decision to dismantle South Africa’s nukes. He said he did so because he could never justify using such a weapon.
His actions resulted in South Africa becoming the first and perhaps only country to have given up the nuclear arsenal it developed.
Around the same time that South Africa was dismantling its nuclear bombs, the Soviet Union was starting to crumble. It was made up of several countries, including Russia and Ukraine.
At the end of 1991 when Ukraine became independent, it housed roughly a third of all Russian nuclear weapons. At that time, only Russia and the US had bigger nuclear arsenals.
However, Ukraine decided to give up the nuclear weapons it inherited. It took years but eventually the last nuclear warheads were returned to Russia.
There are some in Ukraine who regret that decision. But, when the decision was made, Ukraine, like South Africa, was aspiring for a future premised on peace and prosperity.
Our two countries may be on different continents, thousands of kilometres apart, we speak different languages and enjoy different foods but we are bound by a love of country, freedom and peace.
The Post
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