Twenty Years on, It's All Academic: Progressive South African Scholars and Moral Foreign Policy After Apartheid

Abstract

This fortieth anniversary edition of Politikon is an opportune moment to examine one of the abiding themes of South African foreign policy since the end of apartheid, that of the tension between moral foreign policy and state interests. This article, situated within the literature on norm diffusion and norm localisation, seeks to examine the influence of South African leftist academics and the establishment of the ‘moral’ route in South African foreign policy after the ending of apartheid in 1994. It is suggested that the rise of an epistemic community, along with the liberation struggle history of the African National Congress (ANC), facilitated the internalisation of certain global human rights norms, but it is less clear the extent to which these norms were inhibited from becoming ‘settled’ norms or solidified in the wake of national liberation in South Africa. Many commentators have questioned the ‘loss of moral compass’ of South Africa's foreign policy after Mandela. This article seeks to analyse which norms academics were able to build, and how these norms encountered domestic and international opposition in the process of their becoming entrenched. This will go some way to resolving the puzzle of South Africa's ‘switch’ from principled state to pragmatic actor that has accompanied the country's profile in recent years.

Notes

1 For Haas, epistemic communities need not comprise natural scientists and may include social scientists ‘who have a sufficiently strong claim to a body of knowledge that is valued by society’, hence my inclusion of academics in post-Apartheid South Africa under this rubric. See Haas (1992, 16).

2 This was in terms of the so-called ‘Sunset Clauses’ agreed between the ANC and the National Party to ensure that white civil servants retained their jobs for at least five years into the new political dispensation.

3 These conditions were contained in the ANC's ‘Harare Declaration’ that outlined its negotiating plan with the South African government. They included: ‘the adoption of a new constitution and the termination of all armed hostilities’ (Articles 21.6 and 21.7). See Thomas (1994, 170).

4 The UDF was an umbrella organisation of civic groups that sought to revive the liberation struggle within South Africa in the early 1980s, a time when the ANC itself was weakened by a ban internally and externally by the Botha government's offensives on their bases in neighbouring southern African states.

5 These themes are drawn from Mandela (1993).

6 One of the reasons, according to observers, for the delay in the ANC abandoning ties with Taiwan in favour of China was that Taiwan had donated about USD 10 million to the party ahead of the 1994 general election. In total, by the time relations were suspended in 1998, Taiwan had disbursed about USD 80 million to South Africa in aid (New York Times, 1997. ‘South Africa's Foreign Policy: A Tough Balancing Act’, January 3).