Can President Nelson Mandela’s visit to India free South Africa’s international personality from the stranglehold of the past? asks Peter Vale
UNTIL now, the foreign policy of the new South Africa has reflected, more than anything else, apartheid’s authoritarianism. How else is one to understand the behaviour of the Department of Foreign Affairs which tried to hide behind the idea of ”national security” in its submission to the Cameron Commission? Is there another way to explain the foreign policy of a new country which has proved long on continuity and short on change?
The country’s return to the international community has been a cause of great celebration. Much of this is due to the president; the story of his personal sacrifice promises to become a 21st century epic. This is his own achievement however, which is why Mandelamania does not reflect — nor is it reflected in — South Africa’s foreign policy. It has, however, become part of the lore which surrounds South Africa’s search for a role in the new world.
But there is a parallel story which belongs to all: with time, this will become integral to the country’s foreign policy. Because South Africans chose co-existence over conflict, their story has been etched in the minds of billions across the planet. This fact seems to be appreciated in foreign affairs circles, but translating it into policy has proved illusive. So, the foreign minister’s speech to the United Nations last September was wimp when it should, ideally, have been redolent with a sense of achievement.
There is a logic to all this. In real ways, foreign policy reflects the historical compromise which made South Africa’s democracy possible. The spirit of the government of national unity; the freeze on changing the bureaucracy; the power of institutional memory: these have all encouraged rote rather than reformation and its policy twin, reformulation.
The cumulative outcome has been a narrowness of purpose and a series of policy outcomes which — certainly from the outside — seem gwarky. The best and the worst example was the confusion over policy towards Cuba last year. Officials in the foreign ministry were at obvious odds with opinion on the street which strongly favoured the tilt towards Havana.
This is why the president’s trip is seminal. Whether viewed through the lens of colonialism or liberation, South Africa’s link with India has been intensely political. Like many similar bonds, the relationship has been characterised by strong diplomatic outcomes. So, it was Delhi — first, in the UN but later elsewhere — which responded to the call to isolate South Africa: a stand from which it never wavered. In identifying India’s people with the victory over apartheid, as he did this week, Mandela was more than discharging an historical debt, he was pointing to the potential which the link holds.
There is every reason to believe that great things can follow because the apartheid state, and the institutional memory which grew around its foreign policy, has no experience of India. For the first time, then, apartheid’s opponents will play a formative role in the initiation and development of a major issue in South Africa’s foreign policy. How are we to judge success? Two outcomes will indicate new directions.
The first is the test of solidarity. Many South Africans believe that the ending of the Cold War has not exhausted the opinions presented by non-alignment. In a world dominated by the United States, they argue, there is a need for an association which can set out an alternative vision of international society as the century ends. By redefining non-alignment, an Indo-South African accord will help articulate the concerns of countries which lie outside the privileged arc of the north. But there is more: faced with declining access to northern markets and the wholly uncertain consequences of the new global trading regime, this accord may stabilise, rather than rock, the international economic system.
The second test is trade and development; an Indo-South African accord would help to disprove the axiom — much loved by the old South Africa — that new markets lie only through the old world. There is the potential for great growth in trading links between compatible countries even in the south. There is also the promise of lasting solutions to the problems of development on both sides of the Indian Ocean. In contrast to technology from the north, for example, India’s skills in this sector promise to yield applications appropriate to South African conditions and its development requirements.
This is why so much hangs on the president’s visit. Beyond garlands, namaste’s and Mandelamania, this is a rare moment in international affairs: the rebirth in the relations between two important middle states who share a passionate past, and have the potential to influence the course of events at a turbulent moment in world affairs.
For its symbolism, however, the real test of the visit may not be in Delhi’s historic Herbert Baker buildings but in Pretoria’s. Can Mandela finally deliver foreign policy to South Africa’s people?
Peter Vale is professor of Southern African studies at the University of the Western Cape
ARTS