Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the findings of the book. It compares the Indian and South African cases and finds ideational and institutional similarities and differences in the two experiences.

From Pigmentocracy to Representocracy

This chapter traces the post-apartheid transformation of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in South Africa. It argues that in the first decade of transition, the Department remained preoccupied with the process of internal restructuring, which was successfully achieved. This caused structural pains as many of the old white diplomats left the service, robbing the Department of crucial expertise. In these years, the political leadership played a stronger role in the South African foreign policymaking. While Mandela’s foreign policy formulation was ad-hocist, Mbeki relied on institutional structures. However, rather than emphasizing on strengthening the DFA, he created new institutional structures under his integrated governance scheme which, ironically, further centralised foreign policymaking. Consequently, the DFA was further marginalized.

‘Panditji Knows Best’

Unlike most other departments that made the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial regime, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) underwent a fundamental transition of both personnel and ideas. Although there existed three different Departments—the Commonwealth Relations Department and the External Affairs Department and the Commerce Department—which handled different aspects of foreign affairs, there were only four Indians who had served as diplomats abroad. Hence, it was not only the question of recruiting new staff, but also training them in a new skill, diplomacy. The chapter argues that there were five main reasons for the ideational weakness of the MEA in the first decade of Indian independence: the tendency towards greater bureaucratization, the lack of communication, the neglect of thinking on economic issues, the blind imitation of British protocols and policy traditions, and the lack of organizational unity. These factors contributed towards the weak foundations of the MEA.

South African Foreign Policy

South Africa’s foreign policy is often accused of being schizophrenic. It often engages in ‘policy summersaults’, as one observer characterizes the wide fluctuations in South Africa’s foreign policy practice. This chapter argues that such conflicted nature of South Africa’s foreign policy practice is indicative of the ambivalent thread that runs through the very idea of South Africa. South Africa is both a rainbow nation and a black country, a country long held to be trekking towards Europe and simultaneously trying to re-turn to Africa. Embodied in the tropes ‘rainbow nation’ and ‘African renaissance’, two different sets of ideas about South African national identity are representative of as well as refracted onto South Africa through its foreign policy practice. The chapter analyses South Africa’s foreign policy practice through debates around South Africa’s national identity.

Indian Foreign Policy

This chapter discusses the relationship between India’s national identity and post-Independence foreign policy. It argues that India’s discourse about civilizational pacifism is central to how India was imagined from the time of emergence of the Indian nationalist consciousness. Before independence, three stages of emergence of this discourse can be traced on which finally Nehru grafted his own idea of India. Within this context, it then explores Nehru’s criticisms of the dominant approach to IR—realism—and looks at his alternative vision for Indian foreign policy as well as the world. It also examines the critiques proffered on Nehru’s foreign policy in the initial years and argues how these criticisms did or did not differ from the broader discourse about India’s civilizational pacifism.