Wheel of foreign policy has turned full circle
THE main media focus so far on SA’s role in the Central African Republic (CAR) has been on whether SA’s troops were there to facilitate political reform or to support an unpopular politician’s claim to the throne. This is a fascinating question, because if SA’s troops were being used to support Francois Bozize, then it seems logical that SA or the African National Congress or both were getting some kind of quid pro quo. And in that case, it seems fair to ask what it was.
But the intervention in the CAR could be significant from another perspective too: it could suggest a high-water mark has been reached in SA’s continental foreign policy.
My guess is that the conventional wisdom on SA’s continental foreign policy runs something like this: Nelson Mandela’s foreign policy was rooted in the high value of human rights. This was criticised for being inexperienced and naive, particularly by people who believed themselves to be experienced and not naive. The proponents of this idea would probably cleave to the Bismarckian notion that countries do not have permanent friends or interests, only permanent interests. Yet, in some ways, modern history has proved the German chancellor wrong, or at least flawed, and Mandela’s foreign policy, rooted in liberal internationalism, is a great example. The high-water mark of Mandela’s foreign policy came early in 1995, when he insisted on Nigeria being ousted from the British Commonwealth after the executions of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight associates by the then military government. SA had no direct interest in the matter. Yet, arguably, Mandela changed Nigerian history definitively for the better, pricking Nigerian pride and helping to build consensus within Nigeria that democracy was the only way to go. Luck played a role with the timely death of Nigerian military strongman Sani Abacha in 1998, but, at least in this case, SA’s high moral tone was useful in a supportive way.
Importantly, the foreign policy of the Mandela era came directly out of the idealistic notions of the postapartheid period that were so powerful at the time in domestic politics.
Thabo Mbeki’s foreign policy flipped this idea on its head and was rooted in the notion of the African Renaissance. His high-water mark came a decade later, at the London conference of the Group of Eight, which SA and some other countries were by then routinely attending. The meeting agreed to write off the entire $40bn debt owed by 18 highly indebted poor countries to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Fund. The agreement was part of Mbeki’s idea for an African version of the Marshall Plan, which lifted Europe out of the devastation caused by the Second World War.
This idea retained the high moral tone of the Mandela era but located it in a different sphere. Overall, it was much closer to Bismarck’s idea of permanent interests, as African economic progress would obviously bolster the South African economy too. You might say there was an overlap between South African interests and African interests that Mbeki skilfully exploited in a moralistic way. This whole idea was also reflective of domestic politics at the time; Africa was just the mirror image of SA’s own racial and economic cleavage, which Mbeki also fought on both moral and economic fronts.
The problem was that this idea incorporated another domestic notion: moral flexibility in which the end justified the means. That required a process of deliberately looking the other way when events could disturb the general march of economic progress. Through these cracks, all kinds of weaselly characters slipped, notably Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.
Fast-forward to the deployment of troops in the CAR, 13 of whom were killed protecting South African interests, whatever those might be. The wheel has turned full circle and we are deep into Bismarckian territory. And once again we have a foreign policy that reflects domestic politics: duplicitous, Machiavellian and surrounded by a vague odour of corruption.