If you ask a foreign affairs official to explain the apparent eccentricities of Pretoria’s foreign policy stance, you will be told, over and over again, that each case is approached on principle.
We lend support to Iran’s nuclear programme, for example, because we support the principle that every country has the right to peacefully pursue nuclear energy, notwithstanding questions about what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s scientists are really doing in Isfahan. South Africa’s approach, you will be told by a suitably straight-faced diplomat, has nothing to do with our own nuclear ambitions, our need to hang tough in the Non-Aligned Movement or our desire to win influence in Beijing and Moscow.
But, as Dumisani Khumalo has learned since occupying South Africa’s new seat on the United Nations Security Council, it can be tough to make out a principled case for everything you do when you are playing for big stakes on the banks of the East River.
The United States-sponsored resolution on Myanmar — formerly Burma — was a pretty softly worded thing, calling on the military thugs running that country to release political prisoners and stop killing civilians.
South Africa voted against it, provoking bafflement and outrage among right-thinking people everywhere, and warm thanks from the state-controlled Burmese media.
There is nothing to stink up your postbox quite like a mash note from the generalissimos of the State Peace and Development Council. Even Indonesia, which has had close ties with the junta in the recent past, and which had vocally opposed the resolution, abstained. So did Qatar and Congo. They didn’t need to vote “No” because China and Russia both exercised their veto rights, something they have not done in tandem since 1972. So why did Pretoria choose to stick its neck out so early in its two-year tenure on the council?
Khumalo’s explanation isn’t completely devoid of merit. He echoed the Chinese and Russian ambassadors, saying the Security Council wasn’t the place to deal with Myanmar, which could rather be handled by the Human Rights Council and the secretary-general.
What he probably meant was that some of the language of the resolution — which even after last-minute softening described the situation in Myanmar as a potential threat to regional security — was unpalatable, particularly coming from Washington, and could set in train a much more robust series of interventions. Opponents of the resolution were anxious to ensure that a precedent was not set that would permanently lower the bar for Security Council intervention.
But an abstention would have conveyed that message just as well without seeming to condone an appalling regime. The South African delegation will have been aware of all this. Khumalo wasn’t so much voting as laying down a marker to demonstrate how South Africa will approach its time on the council, and its campaign for a permanent seat.
The vote was wholly of a piece with a series of tactics that have sought to win support and influence in the campaign for UN reform generally, and a permanent seat for South Africa in particular. The betting seems to be that the Western powers will be constrained to back a South African bid because it is the most stable and most prosperous democracy on the continent. It is Beijing, Moscow, and to some extent the non-aligned countries that need winning over. If courting them means irritating London, Paris or Washington, so be it.
And if moving toward a new world order means that cynicism triumphs over principle for a time, well, Khumalo will simply have to come up with a more convincing set of explanations.
This is a risky approach, not just because there is a familiar flavour of overreaching ambition about it, but because it may erode South Africa’s moral authority — a counter of some value — without securing the hoped-for gains. South Africa can look east all it likes, but it has no practical hold over its new friends.
Following widespread criticism of the Myanmar vote, foreign affairs came out with a statement calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, and further attempted to explain why it voted against the resolution.
But this episode should illustrate an undeniable fact: South African diplomacy is as much about realpolitik as it is about principle. If Pretoria is to be a global player, we need to do more than jerk our knees in reflex outrage when the department of foreign affairs fails the crisp tests of ethical policy. We need to understand also that the game is in full swing, to ask how well our representatives are playing, and decide what we are prepared to pay for a permanent place at the table.
Nic Dawes is associate deputy editor of the Mail & Guardian