South African Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Nganje ◽  
Odilile Ayodele
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Conception ◽  
The Government

In its foreign policy posture and ambitions, post-apartheid South Africa is like no other country on the continent, having earned the reputation of punching above its weight. Upon rejoining the international community in the mid-1990s based on a new democratic and African identity, it laid out and invested considerable material and intellectual resources in pursuing a vision of the world that was consistent with the ideals and aspirations of the indigenous anti-apartheid movement. This translated into a commitment to foreground the ideals of human rights, democratic governance, and socioeconomic justice in its foreign relations, which had been reoriented away from their Western focus during the apartheid period, to give expression to post-apartheid South Africa’s new role conception as a champion of the marginalized interests for Africa and rest of the Global South. Since the start of the 21st century, this new foreign policy orientation and its underlying principles have passed through various gradations, reflecting not only the personal idiosyncrasies of successive presidents but also changes in the domestic environment as well as lessons learned by the new crop of leaders in Pretoria, as they sought to navigate a complex and fluid continental and global environment. From a rather naive attempt to domesticate international politics by projecting its constitutional values onto the world stage during the presidency of Nelson Mandela, South Africa would be socialized into, and embrace gradually, the logic of realpolitik, even as it continued to espouse an ethical foreign policy, much to the chagrin of the detractors of the government of the African National Congress within and outside the country. With the fading away of the global liberal democratic consensus into which post-apartheid South Africa was born, coupled with a crumbling of the material and moral base that had at some point inspired a sense of South African exceptionalism, Pretoria’s irreversible march into an unashamedly pragmatic and interest-driven foreign policy posture is near complete.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE ORIGIN OF MYTHS OF POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICAN FOREIGN POLICY

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo De Rezende Saturnino Braga
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South African ◽  
World Order ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Iconic Image

The foreign policy narrative of South Africa is strongly grounded in human rights issues, beginning with the transition from a racial segregation regime to a democracy. The worldwide notoriety of the apartheid South Africa case was one factor that overestimated the expectations of the role the country would play in the world after apartheid. Global circumstances also fostered this perception, due to the optimistic scenario of the post-Cold War world order. The release of Nelson Mandela and the collapse of apartheid became the perfect illustration of the victory of liberal ideas, democracy, and human rights. More than 20 years after the victory of Mandela and the first South African democratic elections, the criticism to the country's foreign policy on human rights is eminently informed by those origin myths, and it generates a variety of analytical distortions. The weight of expectations, coupled with the historical background that led the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa, underestimated the traditional tensions of the relationship between sovereignty and human rights. Post-apartheid South Africa presented an iconic image of a new bastion for the defence of human rights in the post-Cold War world. The legacy of the miraculous transition in South Africa, though, seems to have a deeper influence on the role of the country as a mediator in African crises rather than in a liberal-oriented human rights approach. This is more evident in cases where the African agenda clashes with liberal conceptions of human rights, especially due to the politicisation of the international human rights regime. 

Strategic Litigation in South Africa and Uganda: Shared Perspectives and Comparative Lessons

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
John C Mubangizi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Care Services ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
South African Constitution ◽  
Strategic Litigation

Abstract The South African Constitution, particularly its Bill of Rights, is regarded as one of the most progressive in the world. The Ugandan Constitution, adopted around the same time as its South African counterpart, also has a Bill of Rights. Lawyers and advocacy groups in both countries have taken advantage of their constitutions to challenge the government to enforce several rights ranging from health care services, education, water and sanitation, to housing and social security, albeit at a lower scale and with less impact and significance in Uganda than South Africa. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and determine the constitutional impact of strategic litigation in South Africa and Uganda. The paper begins with a conceptual context of strategic litigation. The specific reasons for the choice of the two countries are highlighted before focusing, in a comparative way, on some relevant organizations and the various court decisions that have emanated from strategic litigation in both countries. The paper identifies similarities and differences between Ugandan and South African approaches to strategic litigation. Conclusions are then made after highlighting the comparative lessons that both countries can learn from each other, but also what other African states can learn from these two countries’ experiences.

American Opposition to South African Apartheid

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Hostetter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic Sanctions ◽  
The United States ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Apartheid Regime

American activists who challenged South African apartheid during the Cold War era extended their opposition to racial discrimination in the United States into world politics. US antiapartheid organizations worked in solidarity with forces struggling against the racist regime in South Africa and played a significant role in the global antiapartheid movement. More than four decades of organizing preceded the legislative showdown of 1986, when a bipartisan coalition in Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto, to enact economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Adoption of sanctions by the United States, along with transnational solidarity with the resistance to apartheid by South Africans, helped prompt the apartheid regime to relinquish power and allow the democratic elections that brought Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress to power in 1994. Drawing on the tactics, strategies and moral authority of the civil rights movement, antiapartheid campaigners mobilized public opinion while increasing African American influence in the formulation of US foreign policy. Long-lasting organizations such as the American Committee on Africa and TransAfrica called for boycotts and divestment while lobbying for economic sanctions. Utilizing tactics such as rallies, demonstrations, and nonviolent civil disobedience actions, antiapartheid activists made their voices heard on college campuses, corporate boardrooms, municipal and state governments, as well as the halls of Congress. Cultural expressions of criticism and resistance served to reinforce public sentiment against apartheid. Novels, plays, movies, and music provided a way for Americans to connect to the struggles of those suffering under apartheid. By extending the moral logic of the movement for African American civil rights, American anti-apartheid activists created a multicultural coalition that brought about institutional and governmental divestment from apartheid, prompted Congress to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, and increased the influence of African Americans regarding issues of race and American foreign policy.

Ruth First

1982 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 29-30
Author(s):  
Ronald Segal
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Development ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Police Harassment ◽  
South West Africa ◽  
Ruth First ◽  
The Government ◽  
International Research Team ◽  
The Guardian

Ruth First, Director of the Centre for African Studies in Maputo, Mozambique, was killed by a letter bomb in her office on 17 August 1982: the final act of censorship on a lifetime of active opposition to apartheid and other forms of social injustice in South Africa. Born in Johannesburg in 1925, she was a student of social science at Witwatersrand University when she joined the Communist Party and founded a multi-racial students' group. During the great African mine strike of 1946 she was among a handful of whites who assisted the strikers. In 1947, despite risk of police harassment, she helped to expose farm labour conditions on the Bethal potato farms, writing investigative articles which led directly to a month-long boycott of potatoes organised by the Congress Alliance, headed by the African National Congress. Soon afterwards she was appointed Johannesburg editor of three radical South African investigative papers: the Guardian, the Clarion, and New Age, each in turn banned by the government. With her husband Joe Slovo, an Advocate, and with Fatima Meer (see outside back cover), she was one of the 156 people accused but acquitted in the Treason Trial of 1956. In the early 1960s she visited South West Africa (Namibia) and wrote a searing expose of apartheid in that territory which was, and remains, under United Nations mandate but is run by South Africa. The book resulted in tighter government restrictions on her activities, prohibiting any publication of her work and forbidding her from even entering newspaper offices. In 1963 she was detained and held for 117 days, much of it in solitary confinement. Shortly after her release from prison, when it was obvious that she would be rearrested, she left South Africa. During her years of exile in England, she wrote The Barrel of a Gun, a study of African coups, and a portrait of Libya entitled The Elusive Revolution. She lectured in sociology for several years at Durham University. In 1978 she returned to Africa, to take up the post in Mozambique which she held at the time of her death. As head of an international research team, she was helping to initiate plans for the new Mozambique: economic and socio-political development projects which promised to make Mozambique economically independent of South Africa. It seems she became a target in South Africa's apparent programme of destabilising its black neighbours. Ruth First's book, 117 days, an account of her confinement and interrogation under the South African 90-day detention law, was first published in 1965. It was republished by Penguin Books in November 1982, with a new preface by Ronald Segal, which we reprint below:

China's Third World Foreign Policy: The Case of Angola and Mozambique, 1961–93

1995 ◽  
Vol 142 ◽  
pp. 388-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven F. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Third World ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The World ◽  
Chinese Policy ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
The Third World

The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation. This is our internationalist duty. Mao ZedongIn the middle of October 1975, a dusty column of South African troops, equipped with armoured cars and helicopters, rumbled north into Angola, further internationalizing the already complex civil war there. The South African attack not only broadened the war, prompting an even greater Cuban intervention, it also posed a dilemma for China, which supported the same Angolan parties as did South Africa: should China follow its policy of tit-for-tat opposition to Soviet expansion world-wide, even if it meant allying with the racist government of South Africa? Or should it follow the opinions of its fellow Third World nations in Africa, even if it led to a Soviet bloc advance? The difficulty China's leaders faced in the autumn of 1975 was one which had hidden origins in the different ways in which China viewed conflicts around the world, a difficulty that had lain dormant for years but which erupted in 1975 into full view, and with disastrous consequences for Chinese foreign policy in Africa. It is, moreover, a discrepancy which continues to exist in China's views of the world today.How does China view conflicts and revolutions in the Third World? How do the Chinese organize their relations with Third World revolutionary organizations and their post-independence governments? This article examines the tensions and shifts of Chinese policy towards two essentially simultaneous revolutionary struggles and their post-independence governments: Angola and Mozambique.

scholarly journals COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY AS A RESPONSE TO CRISIS: THE ROLE OF THE JALI COMMISSION IN CREATING PUBLIC AWARENESS OF CORRUPTION (PART 2)

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Allister Peté
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Face ◽  
Commissions Of Inquiry ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Many ◽  
High Level

When the government of a liberal constitutional democracy is confronted by some or other existential crisis that threatens a major institution of state or the very foundations of the democracy itself, it will often appoint a high-level judicial commission of inquiry as part of its response to the crisis. South Africa is no exception to this tendency, as is evidenced in recent years by the appointment of no fewer than four such commissions in response to a series of crises related to ongoing corruption within state institutions – commonly referred to by ordinary South Africans as “state capture”. This has raised questions as to the alleged benefits of such commissions when viewed in relation to their considerable costs. This article seeks to contribute to this general debate by focusing on one of the purported benefits of such commissions that may be somewhat under appreciated. This is the creation of public awareness, during the life of the commission itself, about the nature and extent of the particular grave threat that confronts the society in question. It is contended that, mediated by a free and vibrant press, the public narrative that emerges during the operation of a commission of inquiry may serve to make a liberal democratic society more resilient in the face of threats to that society’s continued existence. This article seeks to support this contention by focusing on an important precursor to the more recent commissions of inquiry on corruption in South Africa – that is, the Jali Commission of Inquiry into corruption within the South African penal system, which sat in the early years of the new millennium. By analysing the many articles and reports that appeared in a range of South African newspapers during the initial hearings of the Jali Commission, this article documents the emergence of an important public narrative on corruption within South Africa’s prisons, and reflects upon the ultimate significance. This article is divided into two parts: the first part deals with the initial hearings of the Jali Commission in KwaZulu-Natal, and the second part with subsequent hearings in the Free State.

scholarly journals Fostering Entrepreneurship Education among Women and Girls in South Africa: Destroying the Gendered and Encultured Patriachies

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (6(J)) ◽  
pp. 227-236
Author(s):  
Tirivangasi H M
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Black People ◽  
Small And Medium Enterprises ◽  
African Women ◽  
Adult Women ◽  
The South ◽  
The World ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
The Government

Gender inequality has been in existence in as much as the humans themselves. The South African women and girls like many other societies around the world are also suffering from the lack of opportunities whilst men still receive favorable treatment. The government of South Africa engaged in the promotion of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as part of empowerment projects for the Black people since the attainment of democratic rule in 1994. Entrepreneurship continues to play an integral role in the South African economy as well as the economies of many developing countries around the world. The creation of new Small and Medium businesses activities contributes to economic growth, job creation, better livelihood of people involved and the communities which surround them. However, there has been a lack of women participation in entrepreneurship businesses in South Africa. Women continue to shy away from starting SMEs. Research reveals that an approximately 6, 2 percent of South African adult women were involved in SMEs in 2015. This is an appalling situation if South Africa is going to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDG, goal number five encourages States to ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. The aim of this paper is to identify challenges faced by female entrepreneurs in South Africa, which makes their survival difficult within a patriarchal society.The empirical analysis is based largely on data from information available from sources such as journals, dissertations, thesis, books, conference reports, internet sources, and policy briefs relating to women and entrepreneurship.  

scholarly journals Countering corruption in South Africa: The rise and fall of the Scorpions and Hawks

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Montesh
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
The South ◽  
Police Service ◽  
South African Police Service ◽  
Crime Investigation ◽  
The Government ◽  
South African Police

In 1999 a new directorate of the National Prosecuting Authority was launched to ‘complement and, in some respects, supplement the efforts of existing law enforcement agencies in fighting national priority crimes’.Over the following seven years the Directorate of Special Operations, nicknamed the ‘Scorpions’, gained public favour; however, they were accused of, amongst other things, exceeding their jurisdiction by performing functions that fell outside their mandate. During the African National Congress conference of 2007, delegates took a decision that the Scorpions should be disbanded. In 2008, Parliament passed the South African Police Service Amendment Bill that replaced the Scorpions with the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, located within the South African Police Service. In 2010 this move was challenged in Hugh Glenister v President of the Republic of South Africa & Others [CCT 48/10]. The key question in this case was whether the national legislation that created the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, known as the Hawks (DPCI), and disbanded the Scorpions, was  constitutionally valid. In March 2011 the Constitutional Court ruled that the legislation establishing the Hawks was unconstitutional and ‘invalid to the extent that it fails to secure an adequate degree of independence for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation.’ The Court gave the government 18 months to rectify the situation. This article provides an overview of the decisions that led to the formation and closure of the Scorpions, and the formation of the Hawks.

South Africa in Remission: the Foreign Policy of an Altered State

1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Evans
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Interest ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Strategic Culture ◽  
Altered State ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
National Congress ◽  
The Government

This article examines the extent to which the foreign policy of South Africa has altered since the inauguration of the Government of National Unity (GNU), following the historic, non-racial multi-party elections in May 1994. Has the African National Congress (ANC)-led regime succeeded in its stated aims of ‘normalising’ relations with the outside world while simultaneously forsaking traditional assumptions and perspectives about the national interest, and how best to define, defend, and promote it? Or has the understandable preoccupation with, and demands of, internal reconstruction led to a situation where foreign policy is ‘on hold’, in the sense that little attention has so far been directed at substantive questions concerning the norms, values, and conventions implicit in the strategic culture and policy inclinations of the ‘ancien régime’? In other words, what are the elements of continuity and change?

The Independence of Transkei - a Largely Constitutional Inquiry

1978 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Harvey ◽  
W. H. B. Dean
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
White Population ◽  
The World ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government

The South African commitment to racial separation is well-known. The deep historic roots of apartheid, the religious fervour with which it is justified by its proponents, and the rapidly growing weight of criticism by which it is condemned throughout the world have served to make it a familiar ideology and policy. Less well-known is the extent to which separation in a relatively superficial, transient context – in stores, theatres, parks, some hotels and restaurants – has been eroded in recent years. Least familiar, despite the substantial propaganda of apologists for the system, is the transmutation of the negative commitment to apartheid into an affirmative effort to foster and guide what the Government labels ‘separate development’. One of the most significant achievements thus far of this policy was the birth on 26 October 1976 of Transkei, presented to a doubting world by its South African parent as a sovereign, independent nation in which its African citizens could work out their destiny, just as the dominant white population of the Republic of South Africa assert an entitlement to realise their own.

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