CAPE TOWN - Khazakstan is a country waiting to implode ever since it gained “independence” in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
For a state that sits on 41% of the world’s uranium supplies and is the size of Western Europe, it is a miracle that it did not explode earlier in the 28-year rule of its strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Instead, thousands of Kazakhs took to the streets in the dawn of 2022 to protest a unilateral hike in motor fuel prices and wider grievances against the corruption of the First Family and their circles which has left the majority of the 19 million population well behind.
Nazarbayev stepped down in 2019 to make way for his hand-picked successor President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who compliantly retained his former boss as the powerful Chairman of Kazakhstan Security Council and as the grandee of the Kazakh nation.
The mentee turned the tables on his mentor, meeting the protests in the streets of Almaty, the commercial capital, Nur Sultan the capital and Zhanaozen in the West with an iron fist, resulting in dozens of deaths, over 1 000 injured and 4 500 arrested.
The arrival of 2 500 paratroopers mostly from Russia under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) established by Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, restored some semblance of order although there remain pockets of dissent especially in the oil hub of Zhanaozen.
Tokayev has gone further by ordering his security forces to “shoot to kill”. At the same time, he rescinded removing the price cap on liquefied petroleum gas which is much cheaper than petrol – ordering prices of all vehicle fuel to be regulated for six months.
There is no comparison between the unrest in Kazakhstan last week and the rioting and gratuitous destruction of property and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July. The latter was a miserable attempt by disaffected Zuma supporters in effecting a popular uprising against a democratically elected government.
Despite Tokayev dismissing the protesters as bandits and criminals with foreign help, it was a popular uprising. Kazakhs have had enough. The refuge of a scoundrel is always the sceptre of the foreign bogey and the undermining of state stability.
Kazakhstan is one of the most bizarre countries that I have visited. It exudes an angst which would make some Germans proud, which starts from their embassies to the country itself.
The tension especially amongst the young and professionals elicit a near Pavlovian response of avoiding discussing politics, freedoms, cost of living, human rights and corruption in the regime – at least in the open.
It reminded me of the halcyon days of the apartheid police state where even the temperature of your sheets was used as evidence to any transgression of apartheid laws.
How ironic that Tokayev had to turn to Moscow for help, when ethnic tension between the majority Turkic Kazakhs and the 20% white Russians is so evident.
During 1954–1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev migrated 2 million white Russians to Kazakhstan in a campaign to develop lands and to balance the ethnic mix.
The fact that a minority of Russian nationalists are also laying claim to Kazakh territory is fuelling this resentment.
Russo-Kazakh relations will always be beholden to the history and geopolitics of the two countries. It is certainly not one of primus inter pares (first among equals).
On the “positive” side Kazakhstan hosts Russia’s space station – the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and Russian military bases. Ostensibly, the CSTO troops are there to protect the installations including Kazakh gas pipelines.
On the negative side, northern Kazakhstan served as the nuclear wasteland of the Soviet era complete with environmental degradation and radioactive pollution.
One of Nazarbayev’s few good deeds following independence was to shut down the Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk in 1991. The logistics are criminal.
The Soviet Union carried out a staggering 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk alone in its weapons programme. Kazakhstan at the time had the dubious distinction of hosting the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world after the US, Russia and China. Nazarbayev’s policy of promoting nuclear disarmament and the use of Kazakh enriched uranium purely for civilian nuclear power use also had mixed results.
Russia’s legacy is huge. The transition from the USSR to “independent” states was like the wild west with the mother country, Russia, ruled by a former apparatchik who sought solace more down a vodka bottleneck than in the niceties of democratic values.
It led to an orgy of state capture of national assets through a motley of oligarchs which makes the Guptas look like cherubs in the kindergarten of the Zuma Kleptocracy in South Africa.
In the case of the six Muslim central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – it was a mere transfer of power to ex-Soviet Communist Party politburo members from these states. They like Russia, were bereft of any democratic political culture let alone polity.
The descent into repressive police states was inevitable, complete with unchecked elite corruption and the socio-economic and political marginalisation of the majority of the population.
Messy retreats from empires are not the monopoly of the Soviet Union. Just look at the agony colonial US, Britain, France and other European countries unleashed in Asia, Africa and Latin America, some of which under today’s parlance would constitute “crimes against humanity”.
Kazakhstan has a lot going for itself – 3% of the world’s oil reserves and production of 1.6 million barrels of oil a day; 22 808 tonnes of uranium – some 41% of world output; 78.4 tonnes of gold in 2020 and 397.22 tonnes of gold reserves last year.
Its Achilles Heel like in so many countries is that of poor governance, lack of leadership and entrenched corruption. Sounds familiar?
Parker is an economist and writer based in London
Cape Times