Deep in South Africa¡¯s wine country near the town of Robertson, past rows of tin shacks and up a gravel road where barefoot children play, sits a little piece of Russia.
The apricot-hued building with its curved dome proclaims its affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church on a sign in Afrikaans. The interior is adorned with icons, rugs and candle stands, things more familiar to a place of worship in St. Petersburg than South Africa¡¯s Western Cape. But the outpost is just one of hundreds of similar churches that have spawned across Africa.
The continent has long been a target for Russia. The Soviet Union supported decolonization and aided new independent states during the Cold War while the West engendered mistrust with policies such as doing little to oppose apartheid in South Africa.
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