The Crisis of South African foreign policy: Diplomacy, leadership and the role of the African National Congress

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Notes

1. For a good example of an early work in this vein see: Solomon H (ed.), Fairy-Godmother, Hegemon, or Partner: In Search of a South African Foreign Policy. Institute for Security Studies, Monograph 13, May 1997.

2. Macmillan H, The Lusaka Years: The ANC in Exile in Zambia. Auckland Park, South Africa: Jacana, 2013 ; and Ellis S, External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

3. Mandela N, ‘South Africa’s future foreign policy’, Foreign Affairs, 72.5, 1993. Graham published much of the information on the authorship of the Mandela article in an award-winning 2012 article. See Graham M, ‘Foreign policy in transition: The ANC’s Search for a Foreign Policy Direction during South Africa's Transition, 1990–1994’, The Roundtable, 101.5, 2012, pp. 86–97.

4. Some of the many works that attribute the article to Mandela and/or use it as an idealistic contrast to the reality of South foreign policy include: Becker D, ‘The new legitimacy and international legitimation: Civilization and South African foreign policy’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 6, 2010; Landsberg C, ‘Continuity and change in the foreign policies of South Africa's De Klerk and Mandela governments, 1989–1999’, Africa Review, 5.1, 2013; Barber J, ‘The new South Africa's foreign policy: Principles and practice’, International Affairs, 81.5, 2005; Alden C & G le Pere, South Africa's Post-Apartheid Foreign Policy – from Reconciliation to Revival. New York: Oxford University Press/The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2003; Naidu S, ‘Understanding South Africa's global governance identity’, in Masters L, S Zondi, J van Wyk & C Landsberg (eds) South African Foreign Policy Review, Volume 2. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2015; Baker P & P Lyman, ‘South Africa: From beacon of hope to rogue democracy’, in Schiffer M & D Shorr (eds) Powers and Principles. New York: Lexington Books, 2009; Vale P, ‘Why it's time South Africa's foreign policy was driven by ideas (again)’, The Conversation, 11 November 2015. While citing the Foreign Affairs article as Mandela's work and holding it up as an apparent early example of the ANC's foreign policy idealism may have been a defensible (if hackneyed) approach before Graham published his 2012 article on the subject, the fact that this continues to have currency today indicates a concerning amount of intellectual inertia in the community of academics that study South African foreign policy.

5. Many of the decisions and ideas that the author suggests were influenced by the SCFA would probably have been taken by the ANC regardless of the SCFA. For example, the SCFA advocated a strong commitment to multilateralism as demonstrated by South Africa's quick ascension to various international organisations including the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Commonwealth (pp. 128–129). This seems a decision that the ANC would have also favoured. In other instances, the author undercuts his argument that the SCFA was influential by indicating that the ANC pursued a concerted Africa policy post-1994 despite this not being a focus of the SCFA (p. 116). In addition, the ANC disregarded the SCFA when it remained loyal to liberation allies such as Cuba and Libya, even though these states were not considered good international citizens (p. 144–145). The author's point that Aziz Pahad, the ANC's member of the SCFA and later South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister, accepted nearly all the SCFA's suggestions indicates that many of the ANC's foreign policy leaders understood the global constraints that the SCFA recommendations acknowledged, but later tested some of these constraints when it was judged possible and worthwhile (p. 119). In sum, the impact of the SCFA seems marginal to the conduct of South African foreign policy after 1994.