SA should look to Africa for foreign affairs priorities
SINCE the democratisation process, South Africa’s foreign policy has always been driven by human rights, regular elections, the rule of law, equality, democracy and constitutional ism.
This line of thinking is informed by the foreign policy documents of the ANC (adopted at ANC conferences in 1991 and 1994) and the constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996.
At a theoretical level, foreign policy is how a sovereign state projects its domestic values to the international environment.
More specifically, both South Africa’s former presidents, namely Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki (this excludes Kgalema Motlanthe’s caretaker government, between September 2008 and May 2009), had an internationalist outlook.
Their focus was on political transition to democracy, conflict management and resolution, diplomacy, peace and stability, etc on a global scale, in particular in Africa.
Added to this, Professor Christopher Landsberg (of the University of Johannesburg) argues that South Africa’s foreign policy during the Mandela and Mbeki era had strong personalities that drew investors from around the world to come to South Africa to do business.
By and large, South Africa then was a centre of attraction due to her young democracy and the statesmen in question.
On the one hand, Mandela was an international icon and extremely popular for advocating for reconciliation and a non-racial South Africa.
On the other hand, Mbeki was more of an intellectual and philosopher.
Mbeki’s reasoning was influenced by the philosophical tradition of Pan Africanism.
Drawing from the political teachings of Marcus Garvey, WEB Du Bois,Kwa me Nkrumah andRo bert Sobukwe, etc,Mbeki articulated a coherent and convincing foreign policy to the international community calling for the restructuring of the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
Advocating for the expansion of the G8 (Western powerful capitalist economies) to G20 (global emerging economies and Western industrialised states), his thinking on Pan Africanism gave birth to the African Renaissance concept.
Mbeki’s central argument was that it was practically impossible for South Africa to experience economic prosperity if it was surrounded by other African states that were collapsing, meaning that South Africa’s foreign policy was key in promoting development and stable democracies on the Africa continent.
Thus, programmes like the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and Peer Review Mechanism (PRM) were initiated.
In 2001, Mbeki and the former head of state of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, were instrumental in restructuring the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU).
However, Mbeki was also criticised by leftist scholars, political activists and politicians for refining and reproducing Adam Smith’s free market capitalist system in Africa.
Patrick Bond (a professor at Wits University), in his 2005 book titled Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms, states that Mbeki introduced a Western model of development, namely neo-liberalism (privatisation of services and state assets) in Africa via the Nepad programme, and South Africa’s macro-economic policy called Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear).
Bond holds a view that civil society did not participate in the formulation of these so-called anti-poverty strategies.
Locally and internationally, the media and other civic organisations (such as Cosatu) also joined the bandwagon on this matter and were critical of Mbeki’s so-called “quiet diplomacy” on Zimbabwe.
These were cited as weaknesses of South Africa’s foreign policy and diplomacy during the era of Mbeki in public domain.
Over and above that, the SANDF became the image of Mbeki’s administration.
In the main, the SANDF focussed on peace-keeping missions and operations in Africa a great deal.
These peace initiatives were also politically inspired by the White Paper (of 1998) on South African Participation in International Peace Missions.
Nonetheless, since Mbeki stepped down as both head of state and government (in September 2008), it is not quite clear what South Africa’s ideological orientation on foreign policy is.
Suffice to say, what is visible in the media is South Africa’s foreign policy articulation on the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) organisation.
The idea of Brics is well and good, though, to challenge the current world order and hegemony or unipolar system created by the US, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.
Equally, the creation of Brics is also associated with Mbeki.
This is simply because subsequent to the fallout between the perceived developing and developed countries during the Doha round table discussion at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2006 over the issue of subsidies for farmers in developing countries, while the Western industrial countries were subsidising their own farmers.
Mbeki was at the epicentre of this debate, arguing that a new world order needed to be created for the developing world to participate as equals in international relations.
In some quarters, China and Russia are seen to be using South Africa as an entry point to the African continent for accumulation of wealth.
This view is supported by Professor Zaki Laidi (in 2011) when he argued that both China and Russia were blocking attempts to restructure the UN Security Council, precisely because China and Russia wanted to maintain the status quo of power relations in global affairs.
Against this backdrop, I strongly recommend that South Africa needs to refine its current foreign policy and locate it within the context of Pan Africanism again.
This has a potential to enhance unity and development on the African continent.
After all, African states can never promote development if there are still divided.