In 1986 Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui called for a metaphorical bridge across the Red Sea that would reintegrate Africa with Arabia several million years after a natural cataclysm had torn the Arabian Peninsula from the rest of Africa.
He noted that, just as in the view of continental pan-Africanists, the Sahara desert is a sea of communication linking states below the Sahara with their neighbours above the desert, so the Red Sea could become a similar bridge. Mazrui also noted that Emperor Haile Selassie had officially located Ethiopia as being part of the Middle East rather than Africa until the 1950s, before re-Africanising his country like Egypt’s Nasser. Echoes of these re-Africanisation policies can be found today in the pan-African foreign policies of Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi.
The colonial powers divided Africa into North and sub-Saharan Africa. Regrettably, international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, some UN agencies and Western foreign offices continue to entrench this division.
How can an activist, developmental South African foreign policy build bridges between North Africa and the Horn and the rest of the continent?
Tshwane has drawn on its historical liberation experience in building its relations with these North African countries. Nelson Mandela led South Africa’s move into the continent after he became president in 1994.
South Africa’s relations with Libya best illustrate Mandela’s combination of pragmatism and idealism. Despite criticism from within South Africa and Western countries, Mandela’s individualism paid off when, with Saudi Arabia, he was able to use his “good offices” to break the diplomatic logjam over the Lockerbie affair, leading to the 1998 decision that the Libyan suspects be tried in the Netherlands.
Mandela’s emphasis on human rights led him to keep Algeria’s military-dominated regime at arm’s length after the annulment of elections there in 1992. Mandela was, however, less critical of human rights abuses in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia and developed ties with these countries.
President Thabo Mbeki’s yardstick for developing relations in North Africa after 1999 involved a more pragmatic measure of mutual economic benefit. The relationship between Tshwane and Algiers has been developed to a strategic level that makes Algeria one of South Africa’s closest friends on the continent and the most important partner in North Africa. An excellent chemistry has existed between Mbeki and Bouteflika and Tshwane has offered Algiers much assistance in internal political reconciliation, gender issues, multiculturalism and economic development.
Relations with Libya, under Mbeki’s leadership, have, however, been more complicated, reflecting something of a “good cop, bad cop” approach. Mandela “softened” Gadaffi and guided him back into the international fold; Mbeki has told the “brother leader” some home truths about the consequences for Africa of his rhetorical outbursts and behaviour.
Morocco has expended much effort in trying to ensure that South Africa did not join other African countries in recognising the Polisario Front’s government-in-exile: the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). But in September 2004 South Africa announced that Tshwane would formally recognise the SADR. Tshwane-Rabat tensions are now so high that relations are conducted without ambassadorial representation.
South Africa’s relations with Egypt are among the most complex and competitive it has in Africa. But the relationship has moved beyond Egypt’s losses of hosting the Pan-African Parliament and the 2010 World Cup to one of greater cooperation.
With regard to the Horn of Africa, South Africa held off developing close relations with Sudan until a political solution was found to the civil war in the country’s troubled south. Now South Africa is supporting skills development in the Sudanese civil service and contributing police and soldiers to the African Union mission in Darfur.
Ethiopia is host to the AU headquarters and ties with South Africa are close and growing closer. After opening an embassy in Asmara, South Africa is using its influence and resources to support Eritrea’s tenuous truce with Ethiopia.
South Africa has offered some support for the progress and stability achieved by the breakaway Somaliland administration in the north of otherwise anarchic Somalia. Recognising the need for an inclusive approach, it is among those AU countries arguing that the region should not be punished for returning to its colonial boundaries.
In moments of candour, leaders of North Africa and Sudan confess to a certain political identity crisis. Are they African, Arab, or Mediterranean?
Properly engaged by South Africa, these leaders will be left in no doubt as to their core identity: African.
Iqbal Jhazbhay lectures in the department of religious studies, Unisa, Tshwane