South African ‘Imperialism’ in a Region Lacking Regionalism: a critique

Abstract

The expansion of South African capital throughout southern Africa notwithstanding, the values and type of regionalism that Pretoria (at least rhetorically) wishes to promote in the subcontinent through the Southern African Development Community (sadc) jars considerably with the extant modalities of governance in many of the states in the region. While market-led integration may be moving apace, political commitment to any supranational regional project remains—and is likely to remain—muted and arrested. South Africa's ability to thus become an alleged political ‘leader’ of southern Africa and/or exercise ‘imperialism’ is less significant than many think or fear. Studies of regionalisation in the region need to be grounded firmly within the realm of political economy.

Notes

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6 I Neumann, ‘A region-building approach’, in F Söderbaum & T Shaw (eds), Theories of New Regionalism: A Palgrave Reader, New York: Palgrave, 2003, pp 160–178.

7 Ibid.

8 L Nathan, ‘sadc's uncommon approach to common security, 1992–2003’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32(3), 2006, pp 605–622.

9 W Mattli, The Logic of Regional Integration: Europe and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

10 Even here, setting aside the omnipresent resentment against the regional hegemon within sacu, certainly Swaziland's and possibly Lesotho's elites have minimal commitment to any regional order based on democratic accountability and representative governance. Thus the notional ‘core’ itself is undersized, to say the least.

11 J Grugel & W Hout, ‘Regions, regionalism and the South’, in Grugel & Hout (eds), Regionalism across the North–South Divide, London: Routledge, 1999, p 6.

12 D Simon (ed), South Africa in Southern Africa: Reconfiguring the Region, Oxford: James Currey, 1998; and J Daniel, V Naidoo & S Naidu, ‘The South Africans have arrived: post-apartheid corporate expansion into Africa’, in J Daniel, A Habib & R Southall (eds), State of the Nation: South Africa 2003–04, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 2003, pp 368–390.

13 C Landsberg, ‘South Africa: a pivotal state in Africa’, Synopsis: Policy Studies Bulletin, 7(1), 2004, p 1. Landsberg's notion of South Africa as a ‘pivotal state’ drew from R Chase, E Hill & P Kennedy, ‘Pivotal states and US strategy’, Foreign Affairs, 75(1), 1996, pp 33–51, which cast important regional states (as decided by Washington, DC) playing an important role as tools to maintain the ongoing American-dominated global order and neoliberal status quo. Landsberg's idea of South Africa as a ‘“pivotal state”’ fitted with his anxious desire to be seen as an organic intellectual of the Mbeki presidency (witness the infamous and short-lived ‘Native Club’). In such a context, supporting Mbeki's role as Washington's ‘point man’ in Africa is entirely explicable. For a recent re-inscribing of Mbeki hagiography, see C Landsberg, ‘Thabo Mbeki's legacy of transformational diplomacy’, in D Glaser (ed), Mbeki and After: Reflections on the Legacy of Thabo Mbeki, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2010.

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60 Fatton, ‘Bringing the ruling class back in’, p 34. By the ruling class I denote the upper political elites and bureaucrats, the principal members of the liberal professions, the nascent bourgeoisie and the chief officers within the security apparatus of the state. See I Markovitz (ed), Studies in Power and Class in Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p 8.

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68 Ibid.

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75 Ibid, p 40.

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91 Bach, ‘Revisiting a paradigm’, p 12.

92 Gibb, ‘Regional integration and Africa's development trajectory’, p 720.