by Candice Moore
In April, South Africa celebrates 20 years of freedom. The new South Africa’s foreign policy was crafted on the bedrock of internationalism. This is a reflection both of the underlying principles of the struggle against apartheid’s most prominent liberation movement, the African National Congress, and also of the nature of that struggle between 1912 and 1994. Internationalism gives centre-stage to solidarity with the marginalised, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the use of multilateralism in the solving of the world’s problems.
The so-called ‘rise of the rest’ has brought to the fore once again the questions of global inequality, global responsibility, and other issues associated with the North-South divide that reached its apex in the 1970s.[1] Appearing to meet this challenge in new and inventive ways are a few large developing countries who have accepted the mantle of representing the interests of the developing world in their foreign policies and in their multilateral negotiating positions. These states include Brazil, India, China and South Africa. Their approaches to issues as diverse as climate change, humanitarian intervention, and technology transfer have been tinged by historical ‘anti-imperialism’, acting in tandem with expanded global economic reach and reliance on multilateral institutions to broaden their diplomatic scope.
South Africa is currently ranked 121st in the Human Development Index, an improvement of one space from last year. In terms of the Index, composed of a number of components, including life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling and gross national income per capita, South Africa is a country with medium human development. In Africa, it is preceded by Libya, Mauritius, Algeria and Tunisia, all classified as having high human development, along with Gabon, Egypt and Botswana, also higher on the index, but sharing South Africa’s medium human development category. One key characteristic of the Rising South is the diversity in development paths which this phenomenon has borne witness to. Key among the driving ideas has been the idea of a developmental state, something that has charged the South African imagination for the last decade or so, that runs counter to all of the advice generously dispersed by the international financial organisations, such as the World Bank and IMF in the 1990s. Yet, South Africa is also part of the Rising South because of its enhanced role, along with other countries of the global South, in global governance and partnerships on key international issues since the end of Apartheid in 1994.
The cultivation of South-South relations has long been a preoccupation of the South African government. Indeed, over the last twenty years, South Africa has been a vociferous campaigner for the African Agenda and the agenda of the South. In fact, it may be argued that, in spite of some weaknesses, this has been an area of South African policy in which great successes have been witnessed. For the South African government, South-South Cooperation has become one of the primary guiding principles of foreign policy. As reflected in a number of key documents, including the White Paper on Foreign Policy (2011), and all of DIRCO’s Annual Reports, South-South Cooperation is a key tenet of South Africa’s international engagement since 1994. In a sense, then, South Africa has long been aware of the potential of the Rising South, not only from an ideological perspective, but increasingly, with recognition of the need to diversify trade partnerships and seek opportunities for economic development.
South Africa’s role in the new international development architecture is also characterised by increased activism as a contributor of development assistance, and by its demotion as a candidate for receiving development aid. This is one of the many ways in which economic growth in the developing world has the potential to spread to areas that would otherwise be untouched by these phenomena. Seeking to gain a greater voice in this process, South Africa has signed up to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and is the only Southern contributor of the 23 developing countries of the OECD/DAC’s Working Party on Aid Effectiveness. It is thus able to bring its experiences as a recipient of aid to bear on its own aid disbursement processes. The country is still in the advanced phases of establishing the South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA) to coordinate its development partnership activities and gather the resources of other donors.
Another key aspect of South Africa’s role in the rising South is in its longstanding commitment to the reconfiguration of multilateral institutions to reflect changed global realities since the middle of the previous century. The question that must be asked is whether there is, as the Report puts it, a ‘reshaping of power relations’ commensurate with the rise of certain Southern states? To quote the Report, “Global economic and political structures are in flux at a time when the world faces recurrent financial crises, worsening climate change and growing social unrest. Global institutions appear unable to accommodate changing power relations, ensure adequate provision of global public goods to meet global and regional challenges and respond to the growing need for greater equity and sustainability.” The Report recognises that this represents an opportunity for the recalibration of global institutions.
South Africa has played a role in this by calling repeatedly for a restructuring of post-World War II institutions, joining and leading discussions on this topic within the AU, and, by playing what some have uncharitably called an ‘obstructionist’ role in the UN Security Council during its two terms as a non-permanent member from 2007-2008 and again in 2011-2012. The country has also sought the ‘coherent pluralism’ that the UNDP report refers to, by working for greater understanding and cooperation in the work of the UN and the AU in Africa.
However, many observers have not been wrong in questioning the extent to which it is South Africa’s domestic fortunes that will truly determine its rise. As the report notes, society-level aspects of development have been underappreciated in the past conceptualisations of development: we cannot pay attention only to individual progress. Society must support development by providing the basis for educational opportunity, health, jobs, and democratic participation. The so-called Arab Spring provides ample evidence of this. If anything, the anniversary of South Africa’s liberation twenty years ago this spring will underscore how central society-level progress is to the achievement of South Africa’s international goals. Slow economic growth in the face of a growing social wage, unrest in the mining industry, and violent protests all point to the need for a development approach that takes seriously the decades-old problems of unemployment, skills development and alienation from democracy. South Africa’s leadership in Africa, and in the world, risks being undermined by its domestic problems. The Global South needs strong advocates of the problems of the developing world, not good examples of what these problems are.
[1] Alden and Vieira, “The new diplomacy of the South”, 1077.
Dr Candice Moore is Senior Researcher at the South African Research Chair: African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, based at the University of Johannesburg. Her research interests include South African foreign policy and the politics of emerging powers.