Ukrainian president phoned Ramaphosa in the wake of US allegations

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he spoke to President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday and urged him to help implement Kyiv’s peace plan to end the war with Russia. Zelensky made the remarks in a video address from Rome, a day after Ramaphosa spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, ANC member Obedient Bap­ela this week told the Sunday Times it was untrue that Luthuli House had been ignor­ing Bri­gety’s requests for dia­logue.

“The level of trust has been breached,” said Bap­ela, who expressed his dis­ap­point­ment in Bri­gety.

The ambas­sador apo­lo­gised “unre­servedly” for his com­ments on Fri­day, accord­ing to the depart­ment of inter­na­tional rela­tions & co-oper­a­tion, after the South African gov­ern­ment summoned him to a meet­ing with min­is­ter Naledi Pandor.

Bri­gety on Thursday said the ANC had “hos­til­ity” towards the US, adding this was one of the con­cerns Wash­ing­ton had expressed at a meet­ing with a spe­cial del­eg­a­tion that had been sent to the US by Ram­a­phosa recently.

He cited a res­ol­u­tion the party adop­ted at its elect­ive con­fer­ence last year that blamed the war in Ukraine on US for­eign policy and the expan­sion of Nato.

But a dis­ap­poin­ted Bap­ela said Bri­gety was not telling the truth about being snubbed by the ANC as party offi­cials had met with him in Pre­toria three weeks ago.

“For him to say he has not met the ANC is not telling the truth. When we came in, the offi­cials at Luthuli House informed us that there is this pres­sure that has been there from last year from ambas­sador Bri­gety. That he wants to meet the ANC; we were asked to meet him as the new lead­er­ship.”

The media has seen cor­res­pond­ence con­firming the meet­ing between Bri­gety and Bap­ela at a venue in Pre­toria.

Bap­ela said that when he returned from a work­ing visit with the United Rus­sia Party in Moscow between March 30 and April 2, he received a call from Bri­gety and the two agreed to meet.