South Africa’s soft power conundrum: how to win friends and influence people in Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s soft power capacity is often constrained by the tensions emerging between regional normative commitments on the one hand and more cosmopolitan, liberal democratic norms on the other. The country’s African leadership aspirations, which require sanctifying state sovereignty and non-intervention over human rights and democracy, is one such example. This article illustrates how these tensions illuminate the extent to which South Africa’s more independent, cosmopolitan, bridge-building posture under Mandela has increasingly given way to an orientation emphasizing its Africanist credentials as more of a liberationist than liberal democracy and soft balancing against the OECD world. Whether this move has resulted in unequivocal African followership as a form of soft power remains uncertain.

Keywords:

• South Africa
• soft power
• rising powers
• foreign policy
• BRICS

Notes on contributor

Janis van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch. His research focuses on status signalling by Brazil and South Africa as rising powers. He is a member of the supervisory board of the EU-funded, Marie Curie ITN, PRIMO (Powers and Regions in a Multilateral World Order).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In contrast to this offensive version of cooperative hegemony, the defensive version refers to great powers that have lost military power compared to other great powers and also seek to stabilise their region through stronger integration. However, these states are often weak with regard to specific power resources, notably legitimacy and prestige, and seek to compensate for these deficiencies through regional institutions (Nolte 2010, p. 896).

2. Personal Communication with the author, senior South African government official, 8 September 2011.