State departments need to reconsider the use of foreign representatives
analysis
Greg Mills
Sipho Pityana’s early departure as director general of the Department of Foreign Affairs created doubt about the well-being of senior-level relationships within the department and ministry. This has put the departmental reshaping he had worked over the past two years to establish on ice. It also raises questions about the future size and focus of South Africa’s foreign missions and the relationship between the foreign affairs department and the Department of Trade and Industry.
Pityana proposed a new managerial structure that created several new positions of deputy director general (DDG). This has been thrown awry, not only by his departure, but also by a shortage of personnel caused by foreign appointments and internal moves. The latter includes the recent departure of the highly regarded Welile Nhlapo, Africa DDG, to an intelligence function. In the foreign affairs department, under Pityana, eight DDGs were envisaged: multilateral affairs was split into two positions for DDGs: multilateral development and cooperation, and multilateral security and governance. Abdul Minty is the permanent DDG for the latter, and is acting in the former capacity as well as acting as overall director general. The acting DDG for Asia and Australasia is Anil Sooklal, while the separate DDGs for Europe and the Americas/ Caribbean are today under one acting head, Ndimiso Ntshinga. Corporate services and state protocol are also now individual sections. The Middle East was to have been moved from its co-location with Asia and included in the Africa portfolio, but this alteration has now been put on hold.
At the same time the trade and industry department has also reconsidered its representation policy. This includes whether to cut back altogether on foreign representation, replacing it with a combination of (cheaper) locally recruited staff, the better utilisation of foreign-affairs personnel in a trade and investment role, and the establishment of specialist investment “task-teams” dispatched from Pretoria. This has been mooted partly on budgetary grounds: the 60-odd foreign trade and industry representatives cost the department 35% of its salary budget for its 1 200 employees.
The Department of Foreign Affairs’s turmoil and the Department of Trade and Industry’s musings raise the question about what framework of foreign representation Pretoria should construct, and what expertise its should deploy to best represent its interests. Currently the department has 300 line-function diplomats stationed along with transferred and local administrative personnel in 92 bilateral and seven multilateral missions at a cost of R1-billion this past year. Personnel expenditure is projected to increase on average by 11,4% a year between 1998 and 2005, averaging 66% of total expenditure. There are 640 line-function diplomats in the department’s overall staff compliment of about 1 200.
The viability of this approach largely depends, of course, on what its foreign policy objectives are. As these are purportedly “to develop a better life” for all citizens, it would follow that trade and investment are the major goals along with more obscure at this stage objectives such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Indeed, the department’s website proclaims that “Economic diplomacy is fast becoming the major focus of the activities of the Department of Foreign Affairs.”
Currently the cost of operating South Africa’s foreign missions comprises R1,4-billion of the department’s R2,1-billion budget. Spending on the “foreign relations” segment of its budget slice increased by 51% between 2000/01 and 2001/02. This is believed to be a source of angst within the ministry, since much of the increased treasury allocation required for opening new missions and expanding the department’s role has been earmarked instead for the costs incurred by the 40% depreciation in the rand’s value over the past year.
It has long been mooted that the foreign affairs and trade and industry departments consider an amalgamation a South African “almalgamation” along the lines of that carried out successfully by the Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians more than a decade ago. Turf wars, professional and personal suspicions, and concerns of functional expertise have all forestalled this. Others, such as Spain’s Catalunya region, have developed alternative solutions, utilising foreign trade promotion offices that meet 50% of their costs through income from services rendered.
Pretoria urgently needs, in the wake of Pityana’s departure and the trade and industry department’s apparently impending reorganisation, to consider the role of its foreign representatives.
It would seem to make sense not that this has ever been a good reason for policy to task existing business expertise to this end. In this regard South Africa already has proactive, largely voluntary (and thus cheap) and enthusiastic foreign trade and investment representatives in the form of South African business chambers. If they are to be utilised effectively in the trade and investment promotion role, two problems will have to be overcome: first, negating the possibility of vested interests; and second, improving the secretarial back-up they could provide. The latter could largely be offset by the provision of a small stipend, the former alleviated by the use of the aforementioned specialist task-teams once initial contact has been made.
There is little doubt that the suggestion of the use of such alleged “amateurs” will be greeted with howls of derision by many foreign service professionals, particularly those fearful and insecure about their own future. But the reality is thus: 60 trade and industry department foreign “specialists” based abroad in regional centres cannot provide the necessary coverage and expertise for an economy as diverse and sophisticated as South Africa’s. Many do not have the business background to adequately represent South Africa’s commercial sector. Department of Foreign Affairs officials are also trained for largely “political” tasks. The promotion of South African industry is more likely and less expensively achieved by business professionals operating in tandem with the government.
Dr Greg Mills, the national director of the South African Institute of International Affairs, is currently a visiting fellow at the Fundacin Carolina in Madrid
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