If words are cheap for politicians, they are cheaper for journalists. We are free to criticise most decisions while seldom having to live with the consequences of what we might have advocated. Unlike politicians, we can afford to have poor foresight. But we always have excellent hindsight.
This difference between politicians and journalists seldom seems starker than in matters of foreign affairs. The distance at which these foreign events occur makes them seem much simpler than they probably are. And this allows us journalists to exercise our defining talent: our sense of superficiality.
We journalists can criticise the South African intervention in Lesotho while lambasting our non-intervention to stop the suffering in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this sense, we journalists have what Rudyard Kipling called “the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. That is, “power without responsibility”.
The somnolent presence of Alfred Nzo at the head of foreign affairs has made his ministry an inviting target for journalists. And the drift under Rusty Evans, the director general during the period between the old and the new regime, meant a confused, directionless and demoralised department.
This institutional weakness, combined with the presence of a president who made foreign policy on the hoof and a deputy president with a real talent for diplomacy, meant the department’s hand was nowhere on the pen that was writing our foreign policy.
That is changing. Jackie Selebi took over as director general eight months ago and has been shaking it by the scruff of its neck ever since. And his officials of all ranks and all races are loving the experience – and him.
“Come, come,” I asked a senior official this week, “isn’t all this about liking Jackie so much just a lot of arse-creeping?” He assured me it was not. Other officials did so, too.
Like Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma, Selebi is one of the remarkable people who played a crucial role in rebuilding the African National Congress underground in South Africa in the early 1970s, when the ANC was close to being irrelevant. Where Selebi exceeds Zuma is in his people skills.
These skills helped make him a sensation in Geneva’s diplomatic community as South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations in the mid-1990s. He rapidly emerged as leader of the African group in Geneva, did much of the work that led to a treaty against the use of landmines and did outstanding work as chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
“When he took over as director general, not only did he impose a strong personality and provide leadership, but we all knew we were dealing with someone who had succeeded at the highest level,” said one of his colleagues this week.
Foreign diplomats stationed in South Africa have also noticed a change. “Policy has become more assertive,” one remarked.
Selebi appears to have set himself three main tasks. First has been to set clear goals for the department. This involved translating domestic priorities like wealth creation and democratisation into foreign policy, and included identifying a dozen “strategic” partners among the countries of the world – on the basis of the economic, diplomatic or other advantages they can offer South Africa. Which countries these are is a departmental secret in order not to offend those not chosen.
A second task has been to restore to the department those of its functions taken from it over the years. It still suffers from its downgraded role during apartheid’s final years, when foreign policy was largely made by the security apparatus around PW Botha. Moreover, the department still plays little role in, for example, foreign trade and trade policy. As mentioned earlier, the department has suffered badly from drift under Nzo and Evans.
Selebi’s third task has been to reorganise the department to carry forward the new objectives. This involved redrawing lines of command, pursuing stronger links with independent researchers and “civil society”, and boosting departmental expertise on particular world regions. Selebi appears to have employed a method which worked well at the Department of Transport under its minister, Mac Maharaj. Selebi involved everyone – from directors to office cleaners – in discussions about transforming the department. He eschewed a crude black/white headcount as a measure of change. While encouraging the careers of a number of bright black colleagues, he has been alive to the talents and experience of the whites in his department.
Yet South African foreign policy still remains something of a camel in a horse race. We purport to exert a certain moral influence in the world – or certainly others expect us to. But Nzo cannot muster the will to criticise Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for human rights violations, saying these are a domestic matter. This from a man who, as ANC secretary general during apartheid, issued appeals to other countries to condemn human rights violations in South Africa – and usually got the response he asked for.
Moreover, some of our leading foreign policy makers are suggesting we should break with the agreed African position on reform of the UN Security Council. This is that Africa should seek a security council seat for the continent which will be held by individual African states on a rotating basis. There are suggestions from within the department, and perhaps higher in the government, that we should seek a permanent seat for South Africa. This would place us in a position in which we would be expected to show clear leadership. Yet we have not yet demonstrated the will even to disagree with our partners in the Southern African Development Community on, for example, the need to revisit negotiations with the Unita rebels in Angola.
We punch way beyond our weight in international relations. But I do not see us retiring to our corner when Nelson Mandela steps down. Rather, there are good grounds for expecting Thabo Mbeki to take us up a weight division or two. He is an imaginative foreign policy thinker. He and United States Vice-President Al Gore have developed what diplomatic sources say is a “remarkably close and respectful relationship”. And the US’s evident willingness to tolerate our insistence on maintaining friendships with countries like Cuba and Libya opens up to us chances to play a creative role in international affairs.
If one function of diplomacy is to dress realism in morality, Mbeki and Selebi, with a strong minister of foreign affairs between them, may be just the team for the change room.