Last week, the Taiwanese ambassador to Pretoria was the only representative of the non-corporate world in a Mail & Guardian picture of the exclusive club of donors of R750 000 to President Nelson Mandela’s Children’s
It is not unreasonable to assume that the ambassador’s generosity has something to do with the fact that his government is making a concerted bid, in capitals all over the world, to exert influence over anyone thinking of favouring Beijing, Taiwan’s rival for Chinese power.
His presence in the picture was a dramatic symbol of the ability of foreign governments to buy influence in
The other clear example of this is Indonesia (see
The international campaign against the human rights abuses of President Suharto is the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1990s. It has galvanised human rights organisations around the world.
Why then did Mandela this week recognise and praise the representative of this abhorrent government? Because of its financial generosity. Not, one must add, to South Africa, but to the African National Congress.
One might ask why there is any reason to get excited about opportunism in international relations. That’s the name of the game, after all.
South Africa is squandering the position of moral leadership and international influence it gained from the relatively peaceful negotiated transition to majority rule.
That achievement, under Mandela’s leadership, put South Africa in an extraordinary position to exert moral authority internationally. The president is the one world statesman with the capacity to make a major input into peace processes in the Middle East, Cuba, Angola and elsewhere.
Wisely, he has chosen to limit his international role – – and South African foreign policy has been dictated by a desire to avoid premature embroilment in these conflicts. But no coherent policy has replaced this — except for the kind of opportunism represented by our bankrupt attitudes to such governments as those in power in Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya and Libya.
If, for example, Mandela has the capacity to make a major impact on the situation in Nigeria by speaking out against the abuses of its military government, is he right to limit himself to a few tepid remarks, avoiding the subject as much as possible?
Is Mandela not doing what he and the ANC condemned much of the West for doing during decades of apartheid?
We have no coherent foreign policy; we have no firm attitude to human rights abuses in other countries; instead we have an ad hoc series of responses to world events based on Mandela’s prestige, his reluctance to become too involved in international affairs, and his party’s need for cash.