As Nelson Mandela and his party of South Africans made their way along the notoriously bumpy road between Cairo and Tripoli this week, there were grounds for feelings of some pride in the presidency.
Among all the achievements of his long life, that for which the president is most likely to be remembered is his determined pursuit of Churchill’s dictum that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. It was, of course, his recognition of that principle that brought peace to this country: firstly by way of the talks with the National Party government, which led to our constitutional settlement, then by his insistence on listening to right-wing Afrikanerdom, which did much to defuse the extremist threat.
He has also pursued the principle in foreign fields with some success. He was roundly denounced by the British government some years ago for urging them to sit down and talk with the IRA. But the justification for his advice was to be found in the historic hand-shake just a few days ago between Tony Blair and Gerry Adams, signalling the high hopes for peace which jaw-jawing has brought to Northern Ireland.
And so we can only applaud his journey to Tripoli and his attempt to get the same process going between Libya and the Western powers of Britain and the United States. “We have no list of pariah nations,” said Alfred Nzo of Mandela’s insistence on breaching the isolation of Moammar Gadaffi and facing down US criticism. And so it ought to be. Foreign affairs pundits rabbit on about the potential cost to South Africa of alienating the world’s sole remaining superpower. But, trite though it may be, we would argue that the best way to secure our country’s interests in the world is to base our foreign policy on principle.
Having said that, however, there are some grounds on which his advisers would do well to whisper a word of caution in the presidential ear. The first is to make the point that statements of national policy are not best made by way of ad-lib remarks. Mandela has a tendency to shoot from the hip. It is a tendency born of passionate belief, which we respect, but it is not appropriate to his high office. We see little justification for his comments at a Johannesburg banquet last Friday which ascribed American criticism of the Libyan trip to international racism. The gratuitous barb served only to dilute his stand on principle.
We would also like to express the hope that the Libyan initiative is based on altruism and not on “filthy lucre”. The relationship between foreign policy and the financing of the African National Congress’s notoriously greedy coffers is a subject which has not attracted the degree of transparency which it should.
Lastly, and most importantly, President Mandela needs to demonstrate that domestic as much as foreign policy is based on principle. It is striking that, after three- and-a-half years in power, the only ANC politicians who have been drummed out of office have been two deputy ministers whose “crime” was disloyalty to the party. The impression this creates – particularly in the face of such as the Motheo scandal – is that cronyism, rather than idealism, motivates our government. If it is time to stand up against hypocrisy abroad, it is time to eschew it at home. To do otherwise would brand us as poseurs in the eyes of the world.
Curb arms trade
The arms trade is not only a moral question for South Africa but one that poses strategic danger for Africa and the world. Our attention is focused on the issue once again by the military balance report that Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies produces annually. After shaking our heads over the figures – $40- billion worth of arms sales worldwide in 1996 – we must not simply shelve the problem for another year.
After the Cold War, arms races were supposed to have ended along with ideology: neither proposition has been borne out since then. Our own continent, host to almost a dozen simmering civil conflicts, offers rich pickings for the merchants of death. From Somalia to Congo (Brazzaville), fairly unsophisticated weapons continue to beggar the continent. But Africa is not alone in this trade.
It is a particular irony that Asia, scene of the famous “economic miracle”, now achieves distinction in the arms field. There appears to be no sound defence reason for the new build-up. But the chief lesson of East Asia seems to be that economic plenty encourages rather than dissuades defence spending. So much so that the Institute for Strategic Studies suggests the upward trend in Asia will continue unless there is an economic recession.
Arms purchases in the Middle East, though only half of those a decade ago, are still obscenely high – more than $15-billion last year or 40% of the global arms trade. To no one’s surprise, Saudi Arabia has the king’s share, expending one-eighth of its gross domestic product on arms – the highest proportion in the world – and taking more than half of the region’s imports. South African arms sales are expected to benefit hugely from the Saudi factor. What good purpose is served by feeding the appetite of a corrupt and autocratic regime that holds back regional reform and may one day implode as disastrously as the Shah’s Iran?
South Africa needs to invert our militaristic history, to literally turn our G-6s into ploughshares and become a global and continental leader in the struggle against weapons of human destruction. Above all, we need to stop listening to the facile propaganda of old-guard arms merchants such as Denel and grasp that the economic benefits of the arms trade are exaggerated, and that short-term gain can lead to long- term insecurity.