Abstract:
South Africa, the continental economic giant and self-appointed champion of
African development, is at last finding its distinctive national voice. Emboldened
by the invitation to join the BRICS grouping of major emerging economies, its
membership of the G20 and a second term on the UN Security Council, Pretoria
is beginning to capitalize on the decade of continental and global activism undertaken
by Thabo Mbeki. Gone is the defensive posturing which characterized much
of the African National Congress’s (ANC) post-apartheid foreign policy, replaced
by an unashamed claim to African leadership. The result is that South Africa is
exercising a stronger hand in continental affairs, ranging from a significant contribution
to state-building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South
Sudan to an unprecedented assertiveness on Zimbabwe. Yet there are lingering
doubts within the country, across Africa and among elements of the international
community as to Pretoria’s ability to conduct a foreign policy commensurate with
its new status. Indeed, already there are signs that playing a greater international
role carries with it unanticipated costs, complications and challenges: for example,
the acrimonious process which saw a South African candidate eventually win the
chair of the African Union Commission, and the fraught domestic and continental
reaction to the government’s position on Libyan intervention in 2011. In
this regard, South Africa’s newly assertive foreign policy remains constrained by
three factors: the unresolved issue of the South African identity; a host of domestic
limitations linked to material capabilities and internal politics; and the divided
continental reaction to South African leadership. These factors will continue to
inhibit the ability of South Africa to translate its international ambitions and global
recognition into a concrete set of foreign policy achievements.
