South Africa’s foreign policy is a tug of war between realists, who are concerned with getting investment, and radicals, who want us to take the moral high ground, argues international affairs expert Jack Spence
THE conventional widsom holds that a country’s foreign policy requires the definition and ranking of national interests based on the “immutable facts” of geography and economic and military capability together with a flexible and skillful diplomacy.
So far, so good, but what this view leaves out of account is the Australian scholar, Bruce Miller’s observation that national interest ultimately depends on the “ideas which men have of the place which they would like their country to occupy in the world … These ideas change in time, apart from never being unanimous within a country at a given time”.
This proposition has obvious relevance for the debate on South Africa’s foreign policy interests currently under way, judging from recent parliamentary statements and the responses of the Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs. There is the argument advanced in the columns of the Mail & Guardian in particular that South Africa must take the “high ground” on issues like the non- proliferation of nuclear weapons, the country’s role in the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Non- Aligned Movement (NAM), the utility and morality of the arms trade, and links with countries with poor records on human rights.
What appears to divide practitioners from their critics is the extent to which South Africa might fruitfully capitalise on its reputation in international society (derived from its successful transition to democratic rule and the high standing of its State President) as opposed to the need –as perceived by hard-pressed ministers — to continue to scramble for markets and investors once reputation fades following, perhaps, President Mandela’s departure from the political scene, and South Africa becoming just another country.
In effect, there is a division between those who look to the rich north-west for economic and political salvation, and those who aspire to give their country a leadership role in the Third World, and Africa in
The debate under way is refreshing and timely, between “realists” (for want of a better term) seemingly congregated in the Department of Foreign Affairs, and their radical critics (Peter Vale, David Figg, and
Deputy Minister Aziz Pahad, for example, has argued by implication that South Africa’s long-term reputation depends on strengthening economic links with Western states to produce the investment and trade essential to promote growth and without which the Reconstruction and Development Programme will fail. “Our European policy is essentially an outward projection of South Africa’s domestic imperatives — economic and social.”
Now, a cold blooded calculation of national interest in a world determined by geo-economic realities might well give priority to enhancing traditional links with the states of Europe and North America and establishing new ones with the “tigers” of the Asia-Pacific rim. By contrast, seeking a leadership role in the OAU and the NAM might not seem worth the expenditure of the resources involved. After all, neither organisation inspires confidence: the OAU lacks financial and political muscle, while the NAM struggles to find an identity in an emerging new world order, where incorporation in a powerful trading bloc, such as the North American Free Trade Association, the European Union or the Asian-Pacific Economic Community, is a sine qua non for small state survival.
Yet despite these severe qualifications to the radical critique of “realist” policy-making, South Africa’s decision-makers cannot ignore Miller’s emphasis on national aspirations and their reflection in decision- making. In the past, South Africa’s foreign policy was heavily elitist in concept and execution. It is also true that no government, however new, starts from scratch; it is stuck with what it has inherited. Thus, South Africa in the apartheid era strove mightily to be an outpost of the West in economic and strategic terms. True, the Government of National Unity has to take account of those links with the West, but this should not preclude recognising that South Africa is a part of Africa with at least a residual obligation to do what it can to speak and act with authority in international organisations for a continent in danger of
Past history and the current expectations of a generation of leaders who found succour and support in exile on the continent provide powerful imperatives, however much this has to be weighed in the balance of hard calculation about the degree to which much of Africa is important to South Africa in economic terms.
Yet South Africa — no more than Britain in relation to Europe — cannot bluntly turn its back on Africa, however limited that role might have to be. It is, if nothing else, an African power.
Both realists and radicals do, however, agree on the importance of a critical role for South Africa in the regional hinterland. Here there is a neat coincidence of sentiment and interest: no state can give up its regional destiny, although there may well be doubts about how this might be given substance. Experience suggests that structure, (supra-national institution building), follows substance as transactions of all kinds multiply across boundaries to produce a common interest in rule making and regulation, and, ultimately, their institutionalisation.
In the Southern African case, what is essential is the prior establishment of a new security regime to deal with threats which the sovereign state is ill-equipped to handle: drugs, arms smuggling, enforced migration, environmental degradation. Only when a region is tolerably secure can the serious work of integration get under way. In Western Europe, for example, Nato preceded the work of regional economic integration.
The current debate provides a degree of creative tension between the claims of morality and the constraints of realpolitik, which can never be finally resolved in a world where small states have so little control over their external environment, and morality often involves choosing the lesser evil. But the “trouble makers” (to use AJP Taylor’s expressive phrase) deserve a hearing, if only to assert the importance of moral considerations in foreign policy.
And the decision-making process will be all the better informed if there is participation by a wider foreign policy constituency of scholars, journalists, and the interested public at large.
But note the plaintive claim in the report of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that requests for representations from interested parties — academics, international affairs institutions, and so on — unfortunately yielded very limited contributions. Clearly, this cry from the heart needs answering if subsequent debate is to be serious and helpful to
JE Spence is a professor and director of studies and is currently visiting professor of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand
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The permanent entrenchment of a “government-of- national-unity type” arrangement was first raised by the National Party, supported by the Democratic Party, in the Constitutional Assembly. The argument in support of this is that South African society is deeply divided, such that majority rule is not suitable. Hence the call for a constitutionally entrenched coalition government in the final constitution.
It is therefore not unexpected that there is now a growing chorus within the ranks of the old white ruling bloc about what they claim to be dangers of an emerging “one party state” in South Africa. The latest voices in this chorus are some liberal and conservative academics at a recent conference in Cape Town, warning of such
This is neither coincidental nor new. It is the continuation of the role, under new conditions, that liberal and conservative academics played under apartheid, providing the theoretical justification to capitalist exploitation, national oppression and partriarchy. They continue to be the organic intellectuals to that bloc of our society which aims to secure its past privileges.
Some of these academics have celebrated the virtues of Western liberal democracy, but when it comes to South Africa, majority rule — a cornerstone of that same liberal democracy — is not appropriate. The NP and the DP point out that the country is so divided, as though they were not the ones who brought about such division. Their basic premise is that these divisions shall never be overcome, hence the need for permanently enforced coalition.
This means that their goal is not to overcome these divisions but to use them and, if need be, deepen them, as a justification for enforced coalition government based on apartheid divisions. The call for an enforced coalition in a final constitution is fundamentally aimed at protecting the accumulated privileges of the old white ruling bloc. This arrangement would ensure that the beneficiaries of the old apartheid order will always have disproportionate political influence to frustrate the will of the majority.
In essence, the beneficiaries of apartheid are calling for a permanent entrenchment of an undemocratic system. Underlying this, of course, is a fear of a government expressing the needs and aspirations of those who have been oppressed and continue to be subjected to capitalist exploitation. It is also a racist argument that must be exposed and criticised as such.
This argument further expresses itself in the form of a call for a federal (or confederal) South Africa. Clearly emerging from some of the inputs at the conference are underlying political objectives of calling for federalism. The reasons are not to attain democracy, nor to bring government closer to the people, but to undermine an ANC-led government.
No wonder that proponents of federalism include those forces, like the IFP, who were parasites benefiting from apartheid’s bantustans. The primary considerations are the class, racial and gender interests of apartheid’s beneficiaries.
The real agenda behind raising an alarm about an impending “one party state” is to create panic and lack of confidence in a South Africa led by an ANC government. That is why these forces completely ignore the constitutional basis of our emerging democracy, and not enforced coalitions, as the most reliable means of protecting democracy. South Africa shall and must be a democracy based on majority rule.