SOUTH AFRICA IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL :

Transcription

1 SOUTH AFRICA IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL : Promoting the African Agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances A research report Compiled by Francis Kornegay and Fritz Nganje

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3 SOUTH AFRICA IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL : Promoting the African Agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances A research report Compiled by Francis Kornegay and Fritz Nganje

4 Institute for Global Dialogue, 2012 Published in April 2012 by the Institute for Global Dialogue ISBN: Institute for Global Dialogue 3rd Floor UNISA Building 263 Skinner Street Pretoria Tel: Fax: With generous financial support from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa 2nd floor, B2, Park Lane Corner of Park & Alexandra Roads Pinelands 7405 Cape Town Editor: Beth le Roux Design and layout: Andri Steyn Images: Shutterstock All rights reserved. The material in this publication may not be reproduced, stored, or transmitted without the prior permission of the publisher. Short extracts may be quoted, provided the source is fully acknowledged.

5 CONTENT PREFACE 1 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 3 SOUTH AFRICA S SECOND TENURE IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL: A DISCUSSION PAPER 5 Francis A. Kornegay THE EMERGING POWERS DIMENSION OF SOUTH AFRICA S SECOND TENURE IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL 27 Sanusha Naidu SOUTH AFRICA S FOREIGN POLICY: PROMOTING THE AFRICAN AGENDA IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL 37 Aubrey Matshiqi NOTES 49 ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE 51

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7 PREFACE Few subjects in South Africa s foreign policy discourse elicit as much heated debate as the role and conduct of the country in the UN Security Council. South Africa s membership of the UN Security Council for the period , so quickly after its historical first stint in , was a great opportunity for the country to strengthen its ability to influence the setting of the global agenda especially as it relates to the interests of the global South in general and Africa in particular. It was also an opportunity for the country to respond to the assessments of its first tenure, especially in regard to what guided its voting positions. The choices that South Africa would make during its second tenure in the Security Council became important because controversies during its first stint cast it as a rogue democracy, working in cahoots with non-democracies to stall the initiatives of Western democracies. This perception persisted even though we knew that in the large majority of cases South Africa actually voted with the West. At home, opinion-makers castigated South Africa for having departed from a human rightsbased foreign policy by kowtowing to the likes of China and Russia, considered the arch-enemies of Western democracies. This point was also repeated, even though we know that the country s foreign policy since 1994 was never meant to be guided by human rights considerations alone. In the course of the debate another crucial consideration was largely overlooked, namely the impact of South Africa s voting positions and role in the Security Council on global governance reform, to bring about equity in the distribution of global power and resources and to constrain the overwhelming power of the Permanent Five for the purposes of democratising the Security Council. The controversies also obscured discussions on the problems of poor communication, weak engagement with civil society on the part of the South African government, and the lack of consensus on the paradigm guiding South African foreign policy in general. The IGD project on South Africa in the Security Council sought to provide a platform for open conversations amongst a variety of opinion-makers, policymakers or implementers and activists on how to assess the country s second tenure. The project provided useful insights into the complexities of the UN Security Council including the web of alliances and power blocs that must be managed for a successful tenure. We also gathered useful ideas on how South 1

8 south africa in the un security council Africa could successfully promote an African agenda while joining hands with other developing countries on the Security Council to push for global reform. This publication, as a compilation of the research that underpinned the dialogues, seeks to capture the ongoing discourses surrounding South Africa s sojourns on the Council and how these have reflected its complex foreign policy identity. We would like to thank the IGD s Senior Research Fellow on Emerging Powers, Francis Kornegay, for providing assiduous leadership, and Fritz Nganje for his assistance, as well as the presenters of think pieces on the basis of which discussions took place. Our partnership with the Department of International Relations and Cooperation and the Open Society Foundation, which provided crucial project funds, is also much appreciated. Siphamandla Zondi Director: Institute for Global Dialogue 5 March

9 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Francis Kornegay is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD), focusing on emerging power alliances (such as IBSA, BRIC and BASIC) and African integration issues as well as selected bilateral relationships such as between South Africa and the United States. Originally, from the United States, he has served as a professional staffer in the US Congress. His research agenda includes such areas as: consolidating the African agenda, promoting multilateralism and global governance, strengthening South-South collaboration and promoting North-South bridge-building in advancing South Africa s national interests Sanusha Naidu is a Senior Researcher in the South African Foreign Policy Initiative programme based at the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA) in Cape Town. Prior to joining OSF-SA, she was senior researcher in the Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and before that Research Director of the China/Emerging Powers Project at Fahamu. Her areas of specialisation include South African foreign policy, Africa s international relations and political economy, democratisation and development and more recently the rise of the emerging powers (namely China and India) in Africa. Aubrey Matshiqi was a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Policy studies (CPS) in Johannesburg until March 2011, and is now a research fellow at the Helen Suzman Foundation. He is also a research fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (Stias). At CPS he specialised in South African politics with a focus on the ANC and the tripartite alliance, the re-alignment of opposition political politics, electoral system reform and the state of democracy in South Africa. At Stias, he has conducted research on historical memory and politics in post-apartheid South Africa. 3

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11 SOUTH AFRICA S SECOND TENURE IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL: A DISCUSSION PAPER Francis A. Kornegay Introduction South Africa s second coming as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council has inevitably spawned a revisiting of its first stint on the Security Council. Given the controversies surrounding Pretoria s tenure, there is a tendency towards critical speculation on its second tenure that may be suggestive of a fighting the last war syndrome given the radically different context that awaits South Africa in During its first tenure, controversies associated with Security Council deliberations and resolutions on Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Iran, among others, saw South Africa come in for withering criticism on its votes and procedural actions on the Council. As a result of widely held liberal and Western perceptions of a post-apartheid South African foreign policy that was expected to be informed primarily by human rights considerations, Pretoria s tendency to align its positions with those of Russia and China generated no small amount of disappointment and criticism, both in South Africa and in the West. Simply put, the expectation among liberal and Western observers was that in the light of South Africa s history of struggle against one of the most brutally repressive and racist regimes in recent memory, culminating in a miracle transition to democracy through a negotiated and reconciliatory settlement, it was natural that the human rights struggle dimensions of this experience should inform Pretoria s foreign policy, and that this should be reflected in its UN Security Council voting and behaviour. These expectations were reinforced by the iconic resonance of post-apartheid South Africa s founding president and long-time political prisoner, Nelson Mandela. Moreover, Mandela, coupled with other anti-apartheid struggle champions such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Rainbow Nation fame, did indeed evoke an image of the new South Africa as a beacon of human rights promotion on the world stage. Both Mandela and Tutu, as Nobel Laureates, underlined for many the perception of South Africa and South Africans as global champions of human rights. The idea that South Africa would ascend to the UN Security Council 5

12 south africa in the un security council with any agenda other than a human rights agenda, for many, seemed like a contradiction of the inspired legacy of the struggle against apartheid and high ground of moral capital that this bestowed upon Pretoria; the essence, in a sense, of South Africa s soft power in punching above its weight in the international arena. The problem with these perceptions and expectations is that they left out another major dimension of the South African struggle and how that struggle had been politically aligned internationally, that should have been given equal consideration in contemplating how South Africa would carry out its duties as a non-permanent Security Council member. The South African struggle was not simply an anti-apartheid struggle for human rights as much as, more fundamentally, a national liberation struggle against a Western-aligned and often Western supported, anti-communist, racist regime. It was a struggle nested intimately within an international politics of solidarity and non-aligned positive neutrality that was largely critical of the West in general if not anti-western, anti-capitalist and anti-liberal within the geopolitical context of the Cold War. As such, it was the former Soviet Union, China and Cuba that were seen as the vanguard champions of liberation struggles in Southern Africa. Movements like the African National Congress (ANC) and its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, were armed, trained and cultivated by the Soviet and Maoist camps, not by the West. To some extent, this support from the socialist camp was offset in the West by ample non-military support provided by the Scandinavian countries and by liberal-left civil society constituencies in the United States, Britain, France and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries and by legislative initiatives such as the Comprehensive Anti- Apartheid Act (CAAA) passed in 1986 over the veto of President Ronald Reagan by the US Congress. Otherwise, the ANC/South African Communist Party liberation alliance was a loyally pro-moscow movement with all that this entailed within the broader solidarity politics of third world and socialist internationalism. This summarised context is critical to understanding how South Africa aligned itself during its first tenure on the UN Security Council in and how this will likely continue to carry through, with possible adjustments, in its tenure. South African foreign policy, based on conflicting tendencies in its struggle history of pro-human rights liberalism on the one hand, and Cold War, third world internationalist ideological influences on the other influences weighted against Western liberal internationalism is an amalgam of contradictions more weighted towards the non-west than aligned with the US and Europe. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that South Africa s first tenure on the Security Council came during the hey-day of the George W. Bush administration, with its polarising foreign policy and highly suspect anti-un tenure as a member of the Permanent Five (P5) on the Council. Former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was and is one of the most rabidly right-wing anti-un proponents. This fact further adds to the circumstantial context in understanding how Pretoria navigated its tenure. 6

13 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances All combined, it also needs to be understood that the human rights dimension must inevitably be balanced by South Africa s other foreign policy priorities as is the case with all countries. Human rights do not constitute a foreign policy. There is no such thing as a human rights foreign policy. Rather, human rights, within the mix of considerations influencing South Africa s tenure on the Security Council, has to be approached as a priority among other priorities, such as the geopolitical, which may or may not be more important depending on the nature of the issue being considered on the Council. With South Africa now into the early months of its second tenure, the context of its non-permanent membership could not be more different. The Security Council line-up, especially in 2011, represents a veritable global geopolitical cockpit, balanced between the Council s established P5 members and the global South power bloc represented by South Africa s IBSA partners India and Brazil which also, along with South Africa as a new member, comprise the BRICS coalition. This overlapping P5/non-permanent line-up also merges into a G4 presence represented by Germany as well as, again, India and Brazil, but without Japan. In addition, Africa s other major continental power, Nigeria, is also a non-permanent member throughout 2011, which is already presenting a challenge in how it, along with South Africa and Gabon, can find African agenda synergy on crucial African issues before the Council. All said, whatever the human rights challenges coming before the Council, the geopolitics of global power dynamics between the West and emerging power blocs to which Pretoria belongs is already emerging as the dominant factor that will likely dictate South Africa s role on the Council throughout 2011 and Because of this unique geopolitical confluence on the UN Security Council, the remainder of this paper will be devoted to examining these dynamics both in terms of how they relate to Pretoria s emerging powers and global South agendas with it being a member of IBSA and BRICS and its African agenda, and how these may overlap in either contradicting or complementing one another. This analysis will also factor into these dynamics the issues before the Council and the Council s future. Hereafter, the UN Security Council will be referred by the acronym, UNSC. Reflections on the First Tenure: In anticipation of South Africa s return to the Council in 2011, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) co-hosted, with the IGD and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), a post-mortem review of and a forward look at to evaluate where the Pretoria Mission at Turtle Bay had made positive contributions along with its less salutary episodes in preparing for its next round on the UNSC. Apart from the issues themselves before the Council, a major focus seems to have settled on the need for Pretoria and the Mission in New York to communicate its positions and actions in the Council better in a public diplomacy bid to gain greater credibility for what might emerge as another round of controversies in weighting. 7

14 south africa in the un security council Thus, South Africa s performance on the Council was seen as having been marred by an inadequate communication of its positions to domestic and foreign audiences alike; hence recommendations emerged from the workshop for a concerted public diplomacy campaign, where this means winning the minds and hearts of the peoples and influencing the public opinion of South Africa. It has been suggested, however, that this campaign may only make a difference if it moves away from old notions of public diplomacy which seek to inform the public, to a newer approach which approaches public diplomacy as a dialogue process enabling government and the public, through appropriate civil society interlocutors to work together in developing policy positions. This remains a challenge for South Africa, given the deep ideological and historical divisions within the country at a time when the issues before the UNSC in volume and political content are even more challenging than in Another weakness was the perceived absence of an affective coordination strategy between different government decision-making bodies, as well as between South Africa and the delegations of the P5. South Africa, nevertheless, made significant inroads in promoting the African agenda, especially in strengthening cooperation between the African Union (AU) and the UNSC with regard to such critical issues as Darfur in Sudan and Somalia. Pretoria also made use of informal coalitions in the UNSC such as the G77/Non- Aligned Movement (NAM) Security Council caucus to develop unified positions and successfully influence the outcome of major decisions on issues of interest to developing countries. This is a dimension that Western and South African liberal critics of the Pretoria Mission s performance are likely to totally overlook and/ or dismiss since they tend to be generally dismissive of third world-cum-global South multilateralism as purely anti-western internationalism running counter to Western political and security interests, assuming that the West occupies the moral high ground. To be sure, much of the non-west s tendencies towards norms and values neutrality and cynical political manipulation on any number of human rights issues do not help matters. Nevertheless, South Africa occupies a unique middle-ground bridging position in these instances which has stood it in good diplomatic stead at the UN in navigating such rival constituencies, both within the Council and more generally within the General Assembly via the Africa and G77/NAM blocs. But navigating between this constituency and the US-UK-France P3 has been tricky given the lack of ideological and political compatibility between them which mirrors Pretoria s own foreign policy identity contradictions. To get around these inter-bloc tensions, South Africa tried to justify its controversial votes on the human rights question in Myanmar and Zimbabwe mostly on technical grounds, arguing that the P3 were bent on using the UNSC to promote their own agendas. This was related to its relying on the argument of mission creep, suggesting that the Council was taking on issues that more properly fell within the jurisdiction of other UN bodies. Myanmar, for example, 8

15 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances was seen as falling more properly within the jurisdiction of the Human Rights Council (HRC) at a time when the UN Secretary-General had already mandated special envoy Ibrahim Gambari (from Nigeria) to engage the junta in delicate negotiations over the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. It is perhaps on these grounds that South Africa, instead of abstaining on the Council vote to take up Myanmar as an issue, voted along with the P2, Russia and China, which vetoed the US resolution, thereby bringing down opprobrium on Pretoria for aligning itself with Moscow and Beijing and being seen to curry their favour. More than likely, it was the principle of where the issue belonged in avoiding UNSC mission creep that motivated Pretoria s decisive stance when it could have saved itself the trouble and abstained. Under the circumstances, this was a display of foreign policy independence vis-à-vis the West and like opinion within South Africa itself among a constituency historically aligned with the West. The Myanmar issue is also indicative of the salience of geopolitical imperatives related to South Africa s alignments within the global South and among emerging powers. This takes on even greater salience throughout Not that this guarantees predictability on where South Africa s voting within the UNSC will come down in assessing how Pretoria aligns itself in terms of foreign policy independence and strategic autonomy vis-à-vis different geopolitical clusters. The political environment impinging on issues before the Council in has to be seen as a major conditioning factor in how Council members, permanent and non-permanent alike, approached them. Given the Bush administration s cynical point-scoring manner in raising any number of issues with John Bolton as Washington s UN envoy, uppermost in Pretoria s calculus was going to be the regional geopolitical context of the Myanmar issue and how major state actors such as China and India related to pressures on the junta, as well as the position of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). For Pretoria to bandwagon with Washington on an issue squarely in the backyard of regional powers India and China as well as ASEAN without consulting them would have been foolhardy in the extreme. It would have jeopardised whatever support the Thabo Mbeki administration hoped to gain from them on its issues, and the African agenda. The fact that the UN Secretariat already had a diplomatic track in play further reinforced the throw away nature of this issue. From Pretoria s vantage point, while it could have abstained, it needed to make a point on the procedural principle as well. Hence the appearance of its bandwagoning with Beijing and Moscow instead. Generally, these are not the kind of insider dynamics that lend themselves to conventional public diplomacy although an ongoing dialogue between the Mission, DIRCO and civil society could provide such insights. Otherwise, it is up to informed analysts to carry the ball in providing educated speculation on how such decisions emerge. Governments tend not to be so transparent in delving into the motives informing their calculus in such situations. 9

16 south africa in the un security council Closer to home, on the issue of Zimbabwe, South Africa was influential in getting China and Russia to use their veto to block the Security Council from taking up the issue of the ZANU-PF government s human rights violations. At the close of the 2008 session, with South Africa going off the Council, South Africa s UN Ambassador, Dumisani Khumalo, said that the Myanmar and Zimbabwe vetoes and votes were simply about the appropriateness of these issues being handled by the UNSC: We didn t want human rights used as a tool: If I don t like you I trot out human rights violations that you may have, but when it is Guantanamo Bay, Khumalo said, they keep quiet and you know when it is Gaza they keep quiet. He says the US and others willfully mischaracterised South Africa s policies. We didn t do things the way the British and the Americans wanted us to do them and if you don t do it like the big ones, the French and the Americans and the British, the way they want to do them, then you are a cheeky African. Well, I am happy being a cheeky African.. 2 In South Africa s view, the P3 were bent on using the UNSC to promote their own agendas. This fed into another contention about mission creep. It was suggested that the UNSC was taking on issues that properly fell within the jurisdiction of other UN bodies such as the Human Rights Council. But then the composition of the HRC, from the US and P3 vantage points, did not give confidence that these issues would receive the kind of hearing and action that these governments thought should be forthcoming. Moreover, there is also a suggestion that mission creep may be selectively perceived by Pretoria. It has been pointed out that in the case of Kenya, South Africa s acceptance of the AU s decision to support Nairobi s request for the UNSC to defer the International Criminal Court (ICC) trial can also be seen as encouraging so-called mission creep of the UNSC. This would be based on the argument that the Kenyan crisis does not present a clear threat to international peace and security, although the AU and IGAD might want this to be accepted as otherwise. These apparent contradictions also arise in the more recent case of Libya and the no-fly zone issue, about which more will be said later. The Kenya and Zimbabwean issues, and more recently in 2011, that of Libya, reflect the balancing act that South Africa must perform in navigating its global role with the expectations of the continent, given its reliance on the support of SADC and the AU. In reflecting on , this has been seen as being made even more difficult by the apparent lack of support from other African countries represented in the Council. But as South Africa s second coming onto the UNSC as a non-permanent member has already demonstrated, Pretoria s dilemmas may be just as subject to the parochial agendas of given African states as to broader pan- African aims running counter to agendas in other African regions as well as at the continental level. The Côte d Ivoire crisis has been particularly instructive in this sense. And as the Libyan case shows, dilemmas can emerge from contradictions between broader emerging power/global South proclivities on given issues and the African agenda or agendas. 10

17 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances What demonstrates is that whatever perceptions are held about South Africa upholding the legacy of Mandela in prioritising a Western human rights agenda in its foreign policy, Pretoria s dominant geopolitical and ideological reference group resides in the non-west amongst emerging powers and the global South, including AU member states. From a normative standpoint, the principles of non-interference (and non-intervention), national sovereignty and territorial integrity take precedence over the democratic and human rights norms and values emphasis of Western countries. Indeed, the emerging powers bias towards an amoral normative neutrality was further underlined in the Sanya Declaration coming out of the first BRICS summit hosted by Beijing, and attended by South Africa. (This was in reference to the turmoil that has been roiling the Middle East, North Africa and Côte d Ivoire throughout the first half of 2011.) In prioritising what might be termed the sovereign trinity of non-interference principles, these principles reflect the interests of these countries wherein, in the case of much of the West, values tend to be politically added in as reflective of certain geopolitical and economic interests. In the process, inconsistencies pertaining to human rights reign all around, depending on the issues on the UN agenda. Predictable as they are, these inconsistencies among West and non-west alike, South Africa included, reflect the dominance of power equations on given issues driving different agendas. These, in turn, inform the political calculus of how different governments come down on certain issues. This predictably implies tradeoffs that are bound to come across as unprincipled on any number of human rights issues, especially if human rights are integral to some broader geopolitical agenda amongst great powers. Within this set of considerations, for Pretoria, its stint on the Council provided the singular global platform on which to demonstrate South Africa s foreign policy independence and strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the Western powers, and the US under the Bush administration in particular. The geopolitics of the UNSC in 2011: the critical year Unlike , the geopolitical environment pertaining to South Africa s reentry onto the UNSC is markedly different. Indeed, the stakes are much higher as the key factor shaping Pretoria s calculus is its emerging power alliances or alignments. This was the topic of the IGD s November 5, 2010 workshop devoted to South Africa s Emerging Power Alliances: IBSA, BRIC, BASIC. Seen through the prism of South Africa s non-permanent seat on the Council interacting with the unique confluence of other non-permanent members in the 2011 (though not so much in the 2012) line-up, much could be gleaned about the country s niche positioning within a fast-changing strategic landscape. It was pointed out that both South Africa (second coming) and India (first time) would be serving as non-permanent members on the Security Council for , overlapping with Brazil and Nigeria, and accompanied by Germany as well as Russia and 11

18 south africa in the un security council China (serving as two of the permanent five). This reflected the following limited multilateral strategic partnership dynamics: IBSA Trilateral Dialogue Forum: India, Brazil, South Africa BRICS Forum: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa BASIC (climate talks): Brazil, South Africa, India, China RIC ministerial group: Russia, India, China G4 Security Council reformers: Germany, India, Brazil (minus Japan) African agenda: South Africa, Nigeria, Gabon (whose former foreign minister, Jean Ping, chairs the AU Commission) Because these interlocking alignments would be all simultaneously embedded in the new UNSC line-up, especially over the course of 2011, the Council (over this period) can be viewed as a veritable microcosm of global geopolitical conflicts and accommodations shaping the strategic landscape perhaps well beyond It may well determine the balance within the Council between maintaining the status quo or moving it towards reform and expansion. As such, it can be viewed as something of a testing ground for the efficacy of these diverse multilateral strategic partnerships in regard to how they are able to advance each of their targeted agendas as they relate to the Security Council. In the process, it may well test the nature and credibility of the foreign policy identities of the presumptive new members of an expanded Security Council, especially among the IBSA three India, Brazil and South Africa as they navigate amongst the established Western powers of the P5, including the US, Britain and France (P3), counterbalanced by the BRICS members of the P5, Russia and China. By the same token, the real intentions of the P5, established and emerging alike, may also be exposed irrespective of their stated positions on matters of UN Security Council reform as well as on many of the critical issues of global and regional security governance that will come before the Council. In this sense, both BRICS and IBSA will come under the spotlight for critical review along with the foreign policies of the member states that make up these particular limited strategic partnerships. Thus has the context in which South Africa resumes its stint on the Security Council changed considerably from when it first served. 3 Assessing South Africa s performance this time around will have to involve much more than whether or not it strictly adheres to a narrowly defined human rights agenda. It was suggested that South Africa s second coming on the Council would have to be judged within the context of a coordinated IBSA strategy among Delhi, Brasilia and Pretoria or the lack thereof, and in terms of its BRICS aspirations (prior to its invitation to join BRIC) as well as the relevance of BRICS within a Security Council context where Moscow and Beijing represent the P5 status quo while Brazil and India (and South Africa, Ezulweni notwithstanding) aspire to join as permanent members in an expanded Council. 12

19 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances For South Africa, Nigeria s overlapping non-permanent membership on the Council was seen as further raising the stakes in terms of how and whether or not Pretoria and Abuja can constitute themselves as an axis of synergy in advancing the African Union (AU) agenda and/or whether or not they can jointly take leadership in exercising a degree of leverage that supplements that agenda and lends it more international, not just African, credibility. At the time, the overriding issue before the Council as 2010 came to an end was the upcoming South Sudan self-determination referendum. This raised a host of contingencies should the Khartoum regime in one way or another renege on this critical aspect of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and the challenge this presented to two of Africa s main sub-saharan powers, especially with the Sudanese President, Mohamed El-Bashir, under threat of being arrested by the ICC for war crimes. China, given its major energy extractive stakes, had to overcome its usual noninterference disclaimers in assuming major responsibility, along with the UN and other external actors, South Africa included, in ensuring a stable environment in the run-up to the referendum. In the event, the referendum went off as planned during January 2011 though the unfolding aftermath towards South Sudan s independence and resolution of the remaining CPA loose end, like the status of the border regions, will remain challenges for South African and Nigerian agendasetting on how such issues are to be engaged by the UNSC. Otherwise, Sudan was quickly overshadowed as 2010 transitioned into 2011 by the electoral crisis in Côte d Ivoire and more dramatically by the Libyan drama that would emerge out of the Great Arab Revolt of As 2011 unfolds, different coalitions among the diverse limited multilateral strategic partnerships reflected on the Council are likely to coalesce around different issues and initiatives and/or to reflect splits when different geopolitical agendas clash rather than converge. In this regard, some limited strategic partnerships are perceived as carrying more weight than others in the dynamics of shifting power equations. The main fault-line within the UNSC will reflect a West versus the Rest cleavage between the US-UK-French P3 among the Permanent Five and the BRICS countries, inclusive of the Sino-Russian P2 among the permanent members, with shifting alignments on given issues revolving around the pull of African agenda pressures on South Africa and occasional convergences between some of the BRICS and Germany. The tensions within and between these limited strategic partnerships interacting with different agendas have been most graphically displayed during 2011 on the issues of Côte d Ivoire and Libya. Furthermore, these issues point to a UNSC agenda that may become overloaded to a degree that may even crowd out the long-standing challenges of institutional reform as in the reform and expansion of the Security Council. This will work against the global governance reform agendas of the IBSA countries plus Germany (within the India, Brazil, Germany, Japan or P4 context) but play into the status quo power equation maintenance interests of China in particular. 13

20 south africa in the un security council SA and the UNSC issues agenda With the multiple geopolitical dynamics animating the Security Council in 2011 interacting with a heavy UNSC issues agenda, questions have been raised as to whether the crunch point issue of UNSC reform will get taken up. Given the fact that most of the relevant state actors are on the Council representing most if not all of the major alliances and alignments, 2011 would seem to be the most propitious time to at least begin regaining momentum on the reform-cumexpansion issue. But this is an issue among a number of others carrying more of a sense of short-term urgency driven by events on the ground throughout the world. It is notable in this regard that most of these pressing issues are African and Middle East issues that began piling onto one another before the end of 2010, only to become virtually overwhelmed by what is being dubbed the Great Arab Revolt of 2011 which has further crowded the agenda with Libyan resolutions 1970 and The fact that, by April 2011, crises in both Côte d Ivoire and Libya were ripening into major investments of time, energy and resources by the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary-General reflected a heavy African peace and security agenda before the Council, all containing major human rights challenges and attendant trade-offs on how human rights would factor into the political mix of considerations pertaining to these issues. As the Libyan crisis descended on the Council s agenda, it had already been seized by the African and international politics impinging on Côte d Ivoire s post-elections crisis. Both of these crises have pushed into the background the still urgent challenges facing Sudan in the post-referendum phase of South Sudan s secessionist transition to independence, accompanied by still unresolved issues over the border status of Abyei in demarcating where Sudan ends and South Sudan begins. The stakes are high given the economic factor of the region s oil reserves and the external interests already involved in exploiting those reserves as well as contemplating tapping further into them. The political stability of South Sudan and the ever present potential for Khartoum to destabilise it through proxy militias as has been the case in Darfur could continue to challenge both the AU and UN conflict resolution and stabilisation capacities. Moreover, this continues to hold true with the ongoing quagmire of the AU/UN mission in Darfur itself. No doubt the secession of South Sudan adds an additional factor of uncertainty over the Darfur scenario and how the Security Council will navigate it. The fact that the UNSC is engaged on two fronts in Sudan Darfur and the CPA between Khartoum and Juba is indicative of Sudan s importance on a Security Council agenda that is further concentrated in greater eastern Africa from the Horn in Somalia, including the Somali piracy issue, to the Kenyan issue of ICC indictments against senior Kenyan officials implicated in the post-election massacres and human rights violations of On this latter issue, another challenge may await South Africa in the UNSC as it pertains to its relations with the US-UK-France P3 and Pretoria s commitment to protecting human rights while promoting justice. In its attempt to accommodate 14

21 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances an often compromising African agenda, South Africa could run the risk of being portrayed as supporting impunity given the reluctance of Nairobi to take action against the perpetrators of the violence until the ICC stepped in. Apart from the continuing stalemated issue of the Western Sahara, there are the Security Council s Africa-related peacekeeping commitments in Côte d Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan s western Darfur province. Combined, Africa occupies the greatest concentration of the Security Council s mandated missions outside of the Brazilian-led mission in Haiti. Given the controversies that have unfolded in both the DRC and Côte d Ivoire, South Africa, like other UNSC members, will be under constant pressure to push for more accountability for peacekeeping forces and more autonomy for African regional economic communities (RECs) in post-conflict reconstruction, albeit with the transfer of resources from the UN, and perhaps more transparency and better exit strategies for these missions. But such considerations beg urgent questions regarding the needed institutionalisation of structured relationships between the UN system overall and continental and regional governance institutions within an updated architecture of global security interdependence. Thus, the UNSC s peacekeeping agenda is indelibly an African agenda with specific reference to the Security Council s relationship and interaction with the AU Peace and Security Council. Outside of a heavily concentrated African agenda of issues before the Council, there is the ever-present global issue of Iran s nuclear intentions under pressure from the P3 Western members on the Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, the politics of how much to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran beyond the sanctions regime already passed by the Council has been overshadowed by Libya and the transnational displays of people power unfolding throughout the Arab world. Feeding into this upheaval is the perennial Israel-Palestinian stalemate, as the US often exercises its veto on resolutions aimed at Israel such as that, this year, condemning continued settlement building in the occupied territories. Looming in the background of this issue are related proposals for considering the Middle East to be declared a Nuclear Free Zone (NFZ) along with mounting support for UN recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a sovereign Palestinian state, a move that would further complicate the peace nonprocess. The NFZ implicates a double standard over Israel s undeclared nuclear arsenal and Israel s non-signatory status regarding the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which Iran has signed. These geopolitical security issues before the Council Sudan, Côte d Ivoire, Libya, Kenya, Western Sahara, peacekeeping missions, the Middle East promise a crowded agenda pushing the UNSC reform/expansion to the side. Moreover, these issues raise a question as to whether or not the manner in which nonpermanent members like India, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria and Germany come down on these issues vis-à-vis the West will not somehow complicate the prospects of them becoming permanent Council members. 15

22 south africa in the un security council Navigating the intersection between agendas This analysis is essentially about the intersection of two agendas within the UN crucible of the Security Council during , that of the emerging power dynamics reflected in decisions taken by the UNSC as they relate to existing limited multilateral partnerships such as IBSA, BRICS and the P4, and the manner in which South Africa navigates the African agenda. Within this context of interacting political and policy agendas, how the human rights dimensions of these agendas are either advanced or retarded by UNSC machinations in general and South Africa s diplomacy in particular will be assessed. Having made this point, the limitations of a purely human rights fixation on the performance of the UNSC and South Africa s role in the Council during reveals a tendency to be uni-factoral in excluding the larger geopolitical contextual dimensions of issues, ones that are fundamentally about power political struggles among, between and within states and their international alignments and the balance of forces at play in these struggles. As such, human rights violations tend to be symptomatic of much deeper local and regional issues of governance between as well as within states. These are considerations that may relate more fundamentally to the prospects of political change ( regime change or regime alteration?) and resistance to change via retreats into such elite protectionist devices as non-interference, sovereignty and territorial integrity. These considerations, in turn, tend to revolve around larger contextual issues of how regional state actors and institutions (such as the AU, SADC, ECOWAS, ASEAN) respond to the governance crises before them that may find their way onto the UNSC agenda. Hence, the over-simplicity of a narrowly human rights perspective on the human rights-implicated issues before the Council. Nowhere have these contextual dimensions in which human rights are embedded been brought home more emphatically than in the issues that have confronted the UNSC during the first half of These pertain, in particular, to Côte d Ivoire and Libya. These two crisis situations, in turn, illuminate a welter of contradictions surrounding how South Africa has navigated these issues within the imperatives of its two reference groups : Africa and Africa s multiple agendas on the one hand, and Pretoria s emerging power alignments on the other, especially within the parameters of IBSA and BRICS. What is notable about how Pretoria has related to these two reference groups and their agendas within the Council during the first half of 2011, is how the emerging power and African agendas have become intertwined. Here, in order to make a distinction in assessing how these two agendas play out in the UNSC during , it might be useful to frame the emerging power agenda encompassing both IBSA and BRICS as one to be judged more in terms of how the global governance reform agenda is advanced in regard to UNSC permanent membership expansion. In the case of IBSA, however, there is some cross-over 16

23 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances into the South-South cooperative domain of the African agenda that, unlike BRICS, may illuminate its multilateral utility, as equally relevant to Africa as to global governance reform. In terms of framing the African agenda before the Council during 2011, it may be equally useful to emphasise its intersection and tensions with aspects of an African agenda in terms of inter-african continental governance in the realms of peace and security. Thus, the manner in which African issues have come before the Council, beginning in 2010, illustrates both the emerging and Africa agenda dimensions of South African foreign policy within the high politics unfolding on Turtle Bay. In this regard, this section focuses on the challenge before Pretoria of navigating the interplay between emerging power and African agenda issues relating to Libya and Côte d Ivoire. IBSA and the African agenda: South Sudan The manner in which emerging power-african agenda synergies can be advanced within the framework of the UNSC where India and Brazil as well as South Africa are non-permanent members warrants attention with respect to IBSA. This has to do with the issue of post-conflict reconstructive assistance to South Sudan in the aftermath of its referendum. This is an instance highlighting IBSA s comparative advantage as a leading emerging powers South-South cooperation platform addressing African and other global South developmental concerns. In this sense, IBSA distinguishes itself from BRICS in the existence of its Development Fund managed through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The fact that all three IBSA countries, during 2011, are on the UNSC highlights the extent to which they are able to benefit from their collective non-permanent membership in using the Council informally as a platform for coordinating their joint developmental agenda through IBSA. Thus, in February, an IBSA ministerial meeting in New York agreed on a multimillion-dollar aid programme focusing on South Sudan s post-conflict and post-referendum development; a commitment extending well beyond what has been a largely symbolic donor role for the UNDP-administered IBSA development fund. 4 This joint commitment is indicative of how Pretoria can leverage its UN role more broadly, not just within the confines of the Security Council, to advance a strategically vital component in the African agenda. The fact that all three IBSA members are on the UNSC reinforces such cooperation even as this developmental initiative falls outside the sphere of the Security Council. BRICS and agendas in collision: Côte d Ivoire and Libya In the aftermath of South Africa s invitation to join BRICS, one of the country s major Sunday papers opined that South Africa will be expected to pay a price 17

24 south africa in the un security council for the privilege of a seat at this table, in speculating how Pretoria might likely vote in the Security Council. The expectation was that Pretoria will burn more of its credibility with the highly industrialised world by voting in lock-step with China and Russia on global security issues, emphasising that when it comes to the advancement of human rights, this is not the company that polite states keep. 5 Unlike IBSA with its more clearly articulated global South cooperation and developmental agenda, BRICS is arguably more the vanguard quintet of the emerging powers as a geopolitical statement in counterpoint to the traditional powers of the West. Whereas IBSA has been touted as having a normative basis of democratic legitimacy as preponderant regional powers on their respective continents, the Sino-Russian imprimatur on BRICS has been the standard norms and values neutrality promoted by Moscow and Beijing. This posture, in contradistinction to the highly industrialised world, emphasises the non-interference principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Moreover, the overlap in IBSA-BRICS membership tends to actually muddle the democratic legitimacy versus normative neutrality stands of the two groupings. For in fact, more of a realist calculus motivates positions taken by New Delhi and Brasilia than a more Western liberal internationalist calculus favouring human rights. Despite South Africa s much-touted Mandela legacy, this same normative neutrality prevails in Pretoria s calculus as well. Thus, going into 2011, it was none too clear that South Africa, in the eyes of its liberal and human rights advocacy critics, was going to perform more in conformity with their expectations than had transpired in In the event, on the standout crises before the Security Council in the first months of 2011, Côte d Ivoire and Libya, South Africa s performance has been mixed, fraught with ambivalence and contradictions from both agenda perspectives, emerging powers and Africa alike. BRICS dynamics are implicated in both cases. Côte d Ivoire The former Ivorian president, Laurent Gbagbo was arrested on 11 April in a combined operation of forces loyal to president-elect Alassane Ouattara and French troops following UN peacekeeping retaliations against attacks by Gbagbo loyalists. Apart from the tragic absurdity of an electorally defeated incumbent having to be militarily ousted from office instead of peacefully transferring power to the African and internationally recognised electoral winner, South Africa s role in the protracted post-election stalemate between Ouattara and Gbagbo has drawn much criticism. An exhaustive and comprehensive critical examination of South Africa s role in the Ivorian crisis awaits analysis. In spite of the initially unanimous African, UN and international acknowledgement of Ouattara having won Côte d Ivoire s presidential election, a verdict that South Africa concurred with, Pretoria subsequently back-tracked as Gbagbo hung onto power. 18

25 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances Apart from adopting a position that cast doubt on the credibility of the election result and the role of the UN in the process, in particular the UN s impartiality under a Security Council-mandated electoral certification intervention requested by both Gbagbo and Ouattara, South Africa s waffling diplomacy raised numerous questions. These involved Pretoria s newly conferred BRICS membership and the constraining role of Russia as a P5 member of the Council in containing pressure on Gbagbo; the continental and interregional dynamics between South Africa and Nigeria, and both non-permanent members on the UNSC vying for an African permanent seat on the Council accompanied by appearances of an out of area African power challenging the regional proprietary role of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the Ivorian crisis. Also implicated were the added influences of inter-african geopolitical power equations involving Pretoria s warming relationship with Angola and Luanda s pro-gbagbo bias amid its perceived regional power ambitions in southwesterlycentral coastal Africa, where the Southern African Development Community (SADC) merges into the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) with the latter s proximity to ECOWAS. These inter-african regional equations put into play by South Africa s backing away from its initial concurrence with the AU, ECOWAS and the UN on Ouattara s victory reverberated around the AU and reflected in its futile effort to mediate toward a government of national unity outcome which, at the end of the day, only reinforced the original unanimity of the UN certification of the electoral outcome. Interacting with these political dynamics was a lively South African and international debate over how free and fair the Ivorian election actually was and the legitimacy of both the electoral commission s pronouncement in favour of Ouattara backed by the UN certification process and the overturning of the commission s verdict by the Gbagbo-aligned constitutional court. Missing in this debate was any serious challenge to the credibility of the UN certification process irrespective of the electoral commission-constitutional court rivalry. 6 Nevertheless, the UN was seen as having compromised its impartiality, calling into question the Security Council-mandated peacekeeping role which, as the stalemate dragged on, saw the UN come into direct confrontation with Gbagbo and his loyalists, with an emerging Ouattara-France-UN alignment in the ensuing power struggle. South Africa s role in this complex of power equations generated suspicions of varying degrees of speculative credibility. For one thing, there appeared to be an evolving convergence between Pretoria s newfound impartiality between Ouattara and Gbagbo and the non-interference neutralities of Russia and China where the notion of an electoral re-run was one of the options being vetted as a solution to the stalemate. The fact that Moscow had an off-shore oil exploration bloc stake behind its perceived tilt towards Gbagbo also surfaced as a possible influence in what was seen as the possibility of the kind of BRICS calculus originally raised by the Sunday Times January 16 th editorial. But if this was a case of Pretoria s BRICS-informed emerging power agenda trumping an African agenda with 19

26 south africa in the un security council major democracy promotion and human rights implications, this speculation was offset by a rival African geopolitical power agenda, with it being alleged that South Africa s increasingly close relations with Angola had a bearing on what was increasingly perceived as a Pretoria tilt towards Gbagbo. Historical baggage ranging from French colonialism and neo-colonialism to Côte d Ivoire s support for Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi (who at one point was backed by Beijing) under the country s founding president Felix Houphouet Boigny have figured in the tortured politics of the Ivorian crisis. In the final analysis, South Africa s approach to the Ivorian crisis appears to have been based on a mix of motives and influences reflecting more a case of conflicting African agendas than any overriding emerging power agendas. But a more exhaustive political analysis of how the African and international politics of the Côte d Ivoire stalemate impinged on Pretoria s changing positions would help in more definitively assessing South Africa s role in this crisis over the first part of Now that Gbagbo has been arrested and Ouattara ascends to the presidency of Côte d Ivoire, how Pretoria figures in the post-conflict stabilisation of the country under its UN peacekeeping mandate will more definitively determine South Africa s performance as a non-permanent Council member during its tenure. Libya If South Africa risked alienating the P3 Western powers on the UNSC during its first tenure on the Council during , and the US in particular, Pretoria s BRICS membership did not prevent it from clubbing with other African nonpermanent members Nigeria and Gabon in voting in favour of the 1973 no-fly zone resolution, opening the way for the wave of Western air attacks against Muammar Qaddafi s military offensive against Benghazi-based opposition forces. 7 Just as in the case of the Myanmar resolution during its tenure on the Council, when South Africa could have abstained instead of voting with Beijing and Moscow in their veto of the resolution, it could have abstained on 1973 but didn t. Was this show of strategic autonomy and foreign policy independence visà-vis BRICS motivated by a need to convey a measure of Afro-Arab solidarity in the wake of the Arab League s fig leaf of regional buy-in with the Euro-American coalition on no-fly implementation? Here, the diplomatic dynamics between the Africa Group at the UN, the Arab League UN envoys and Western lobbying on Resolution 1973 seem to have received little or no attention, yet could be most illuminating in revealing the extent of Afro-Arab coordination on the resolution, especially given the divisions on whether or not such an initiative should be endorsed. Certainly it seems as if outgoing Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa (and prospective Egyptian presidential contender) would have preferred an Afro-Arab common position dictating the humanitarian interventionist agenda on Libya. In fact, Arab League 20

27 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances fault-lines between pro-iran and non-monarchical autocratic regimes like Syria and Algeria, and Sunni monarchies led by the House of Saud, with its longstanding anti-qaddafi agenda, were matched within the African camp by no small amount of ambivalence, reflecting Qaddafi s largess in underwriting the dues of many an African member of the AU. In the event, though Pretoria broke with its BRICS allies on Resolution 1973, it has tried to have it both ways just as initially Amr Moussa did on behalf of the Arab League in taking strong exception to the manner in which the P3 military vanguard went about implementing Resolution 1973 in spite of widespread foreknowledge that instituting a no-fly zone would necessarily involve displays of military force via air strikes. Whereas South Africa diverged from its BRICS (and IBSA) partners in voting for the no-fly zone against the Qaddafi regime, the fact that Brazil, Russia, India and China abstained obscures the important fact that, indeed, all four BRIC members of the Security Council could have actually voted against Resolution The fact that they did not do so has to be seen as at least as, if not more, important than had they actually vetoed (in the case of Russia and China) or voted against (India and Brazil) the resolution. In fact, all four BRIC members on the Council had reason enough not to go against the Euro-American-Arab consensus and, in effect, acquiesced in a multilateral war of humanitarian intervention while reserving the option to openly condemn its execution which, indeed they have done as has South Africa in an effort to realign itself with BRICS while displaying its independence within this grouping. Nevertheless, these acrobatics on Pretoria s part did not prevent heated debate within South Africa s ruling establishment and commentary led by no less than former South African president Thabo Mbeki himself. 8 Mbeki, revealing himself every much the quintessential conservative proponent of a state-centric Africanism (one strains to label it pan-africanism ), depicts the Libyan scenario as an elaborate Western conspiracy to marginalise Africa while side-lining African solutions to African problems, even as he vents his frustration over the lack of proactive African agency on Libya. In a Johannesburg Star op-ed titled How the West won control over Africa, the former president asserts a premeditation in the UNSC making absolutely sure that it ignored the continent s views on what had to be done to help Libya. 9 While it is with reluctance that one would want to label Mbeki anti-western, he nevertheless posits something suspect about the attempts of the West to identify itself as an ally of the popular uprisings in North Africa, to the extent that these represented real democratic revolutions (emphasis added). Not that Mbeki himself and/ or fellow AU heads-of-states would presumably identify themselves as allies of popular uprisings either, wedded as they all are to their own narrow vested interest definitions of sovereignty which must not be interfered with. 10 Candid as Mbeki is about Africa s weaknesses and lack of capacity to actionably communicate with itself, he accuses the West of underlining Africa s marginalisation on deciding Libya s fate by insisting, to this day, what is important to them is the 21

28 south africa in the un security council support of the League of Arab States, with absolutely no mention of the AU. 11 Apart from the no-brainer logic in focusing on the Arab League as the point of departure for any non-western buy-in on intervening in Libya, one is compelled to ask where the communication between the AU and the Arab League could be found. For that matter, between the AU and Turkey, as Ankara is accused of having plagiarised the AU s road map? Why was there apparently no attempt at a proactive Afro-Arab attempt at a consensus position on how the UNSC should deal with Libya? Whether Mbeki s lament was heard or not, the AU has indeed had its stab at politically intervening in the Libyan stalemate between Qaddafi and his opponents in what appears to have been the ultimately futile AU heads-of-state visit to Libya in an attempt to get both camps to buy into a road map to negotiated transition. Notably, this initiative was led by UNSC non-permanent member South Africa. Just as notably, the fact that Qaddafi accepted the AU road map proposal while the Transitional National Interim Council rejected it, highlights the AU s lack of credibility as an African heads-of-state club of shared elite sovereignty in which allying with popular uprisings spearheading real democratic revolutions seems utterly alien. Meanwhile, rejoinders to Mbeki included the Sunday Times Mondli Makhanya pointing out the irony of Qaddafi calling for protesters to be lynched to which African leaders issued statements encouraging peace and love while the University of KwaZulu-Natal s Imraan Buccus critiqued African apathy for African problems from Libya to Zim in the Sunday Independent. 12 These and other counterpoints to Mbeki s Star article raise fundamental questions confronting South Africa and other would-be claimants to a permanent seat on the UNSC on how, whether and when to invoke the responsibility to protect (R2P), not just in such cases as Libya and Côte d Ivoire but in the continuing UNSC peacekeeping and peace support missions as in Sudan s Darfur, the DRC s eastern region and in war-ravaged stateless Somalia; the Somali scenario, along with Libya and Côte d Ivoire challenging how passive peacekeeping contingents, whether of the UN and/or the AU or some other multinational force, can exist in the face of military challenges with an increasing penchant for attacking peacekeeping deployments. Hence controversies that have emerged out of both the Côte d Ivoire and Libyan crises concerning the extent to which NATO, UN and French forces, respectively, are really abiding by their mandates to protect civilians without stretching their engagements into more aggressive regime change initiatives. These are thorny issues of complex ethical and moral dimensions that are likely to confront South Africa throughout the remainder of its Council tenure, and confront it in a much more robust manner than the more clearly defined human rights issues raised during its tenure. Nevertheless, the extent to which human rights concerns can be credibly addressed are deeply embedded in the outcomes of the power-struggles involved in many of the issues on the Council s agenda this time around, and in a manner that may not lend them to easily being re-directed to the HRC. Many of these issues, old 22

29 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances and new, also underline the importance of UNSC reform, not just in the sense of expanding the Council s permanent membership but also how the Council and the UN in general relates to so-called Chapter 8 continental and regional intergovernmental governance structures. Prospects for UNSC reform: window of opportunity or mirage? While the Côte d Ivoire and Libyan crises have overshadowed most other UNSC agenda items, including some like Iran s nuclear ambitions of major international security consequence as well as a host of other African issues, these two challenges have, perhaps, underlined why Security Council reform is so urgently needed. The manner in which Resolution 1973 was cobbled together and passed without a veto being exercised demonstrated how the Western P3 can shape the balance of forces in the Council in a manner that virtually marginalises major powers that are non-permanent members which might otherwise, were they permanent, influence a different outcome on such momentous questions of intervention. Given that three of the five BRICS are non-permanent members trying to become permanent, this new power constellation remains outnumbered with Moscow and Beijing mainly relegated to a negative blocking role rather than one that is more positive in terms of agenda-setting. Their non-interference orientation reinforces such negativity to a point where this posture might come under challenge in a changed permanent membership configuration. Russia s applying breaks to the ratcheting-up of pressure on Laurent Gbagbo that the Africa Group wanted to have the Security Council apply is indicative. As such, the role and usefulness of the UNSC retaining the veto and/or reserving it for the P5 but not for new permanent members is a reform issue of some consequence in terms of how a newly configured Council might reflect a changing balance of forces on given issues. Indeed, that Africa remains wedded to the Ezulwini Consensus on prospective permanent African members having the veto is one of the hurdles to reform as a sticking point that could block renewed UNSC reform momentum. Alternatively, should Security Council reform begin to become more of a likely prospect, it is open to question as to how much of a sticking point Africa s insistence on its permanent members having the veto might remain. In any case, the fact that China is on record as supporting Ezulwini may be suggestive of Beijing s interest in seeing that UNSC reform momentum does not gain traction as this would force it to have to accommodate its key rivals, India, BRICS notwithstanding, and Japan. By some accounts, China is seen as a major roadblock to UNSC reform, notwithstanding the BRICS Sanya Declaration where the Leaders Meeting hosted by China reaffirmed the need for a comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council, with a view to making it more effective, efficient 23

30 south africa in the un security council and representative, so that it can deal with today s global challenges more successfully, noting that China and Russia reiterated the importance they attach to the status of India, Brazil and South Africa in international affairs, and understand and support their aspiration to play a greater role in the UN. 13 The US, on the other hand, might deem it more in its interest to bring on board additional permanent members as one more means of containing China s rising global power momentum. All of which illuminates BRICS inherent geopolitical contradictions militating against its cohesion as a global governance caucus on behalf of emerging powers and the global South. From the vantage point of advancing an African agenda, BRICS contradictions that might contribute to further putting off reform are hardly a welcome prospect given that so much of the UNSC s peacekeeping agenda is dominated by pressing African peace and security concerns. Indeed, reform and expansion of the Council is but the tip of the iceberg of the reform agenda. Because of the dominance of African peace and security issues on the Security Council s peacekeeping agenda, a reform process leading towards a more formalised structuring of the relationship between the UNSC and the AU s Peace and Security Council would seem to be a major South African priority as a non-permanent member during But a formalised UNSC-AU/ PSC relationship begs further questions about the UN system in general and the UN s Chapter VIII relationship with regionalised continental and subregional governance institutions; not just the AU but the EU, the Organisation of American States and/or the South American UNASUR and its South American Defence Council, the ASEAN and its ARF mechanism as well as NATO. Much of what passes for cooperation and coordination between the UNSC and such continental and regional bodies is improvisational and ad hoc in nature, based on a coalition of the willing format. Nevertheless, much progress has been made between the UN and its Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council in situations such as in Burundi and Darfur. However, UNSC-AU/PSC relations tend to place in equally sharp relief the need for greater synergies between the AU/PSC and the security organs of Africa s regional economic communities (RECs) which also have to be factored into a more formally structured Chapter VIII relationship. In other words, the UN/UNSC reform agenda will have to increasingly move towards a more integrated framework of interface with the fledgling African Peace and Security Architecture and comparable security and governance institutionalised mechanisms on other continents. As in Africa, the trend is more towards resolving intra-state as opposed to inter-state crises coupled with the need for mobilising post-conflict reconstruction and recovery capacities. For the remainder of Pretoria s tenure on the Council, it will have to focus on how much and what it can accomplish in further advancing UNSC-AU/PSC institutional and operational synergies beyond the progress made during its tenure. This will have to be attempted within the context of addressing 24

31 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances specific peacekeeping mission challenges such as in the DRC and Darfur as well as in Côte d Ivoire along with Security Council oversight of the NATO no-fly intervention in Libya under Resolution 1973 and such non-unsc mandated crises as that in Somalia involving the AU s embattled troop presence and the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD). In all, South Africa has its work cut out for it given the backlog of issues before the Council. Conclusion The foregoing is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of South Africa s past performance on the UNSC ( ) or foretell how its current tenure ( ) will unfold and culminate. Rather, it aims to survey the complex geopolitical and policy terrain that Pretoria has had and will continue to have to navigate in the UNSC as it continues to shape its foreign policy identity amidst the African and non-african alignments it is forging as an African and an emerging middle power. This background is also intended to highlight some of the value-laden normative dilemmas inherent in this process in the interplay between the avowed human rights commitments South Africa espouses and the inevitabilities of realpolitik dictated by dynamics flowing from great power geopolitical contradictions; contradictions between traditional powers of the USled West who dominate the UNSC as well as within its own African and emerging power reference groups. As South Africa wades through this thorn field, it has to also try and mount a reform effort along with others in reshaping the global governance structure, and the function and thrust of the Security Council, a daunting challenge. Unlike the G-20 where the focus is on global economic governance, an agenda that speaks more to the comfort zone of its BRICS partners in particular, China especially, the Security Council presents South Africa and other aspirant actors with the challenge of reforming global political governance in the complex realm of security interdependencies. The dual challenge here is both global and African, the interplay between reforming global governance and advancing the African agenda generally, and the African peace and security agenda specifically. Meanwhile, the human rights dilemmas embedded in these challenges highlight many of the bigger pictures that must be addressed in arriving at political reforms within and outside the UN system and within Africa itself, accompanied by enabling geopolitical arrangements that will benefit the advancement of human rights, mindful that there are often frustrating realist trade-offs along the way in trying to achieve such idealist aims. Both the interactive emerging powers and African agenda terrains that South Africa must navigate in are already bearing out these realities. 25

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33 THE EMERGING POWERS DIMENSION OF SOUTH AFRICA S SECOND TENURE IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL Sanusha Naidu Introduction South Africa s current two-year non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) can best be described as a second chance. In the period since Pretoria s first term in , South Africa s foreign policy has undergone some significant shifts. The first of these under the Zuma Administration was the change in the name of the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO). This created the impression that the impetus behind the country s foreign policy would be anchored along the lines of a more expansive set of engagements that entailed cooperation as a foundation of its foreign ambitions. This was followed by the diplomatic BRIC offensive wherein President Zuma undertook an aggressive campaign to lobby for South Africa s inclusion as the fifth BRIC in the club. Spanning a period of almost 18 months, the charm offensive that surrounded this diplomacy ultimately culminated with Pretoria being invited by the People s Republic of China to join BRICS at the end of While South Africa s status as a BRIC member was greeted with bemusement and continues to remain so, for the South African government it symbolises a sense of recognition of Pretoria s international legitimacy as a strategic actor in Africa and within the global South. But perhaps a more considered impression is that entry into BRICS reaffirms Pretoria s commitment to the global governance reform agenda, notwithstanding its ambitions to be seen as a sovereign state that is guided by an independent foreign policy shaped by a profound understanding of the changing character of the world. 14 More than this, however, Pretoria s second term on the UNSC is as much about the South African government s desire to pursue an international mandate that can be viewed as non-aligned as it is about dismissing the criticisms of its 27

34 south africa in the un security council performance and behaviour during its UNSC membership and thereby recasting its global image. Taking the above issues into consideration, the stakes are certainly high for the South African government in how it positions and articulates its voice and votes on various issues that will confront the UNSC during its two-year membership. And perhaps even more compelling for Pretoria will be the need to demonstrate its ability to be a pragmatic broker that will assist in strengthening its campaign to be one of the several permanent members in an expanded and reformed UNSC. But for South Africa the current membership of the UNSC is fraught with difficulties. Not least because of the expectations by mainstream international, continental and domestic commentators, critics and media that Pretoria has not abandoned its moral duties of a responsible stakeholder that upholds the normative principles of social justice and human rights in the global governance architecture. This will be judged in South Africa s every move within the UNSC, and checked against the international narrative of North-South issues, the emerging powers discourse and the African agenda focus, in terms of how Pretoria aligns and advances its foreign policy principles and agenda within the crux of these competing interests and global ambitions. At stake for South Africa s current non-permanent seat within the UNSC is the significance of how Pretoria navigates through the juxtaposition of multi-polarity versus multilateralism within the current international order and its perceived obligations within the African continent. Added to this mix will be South Africa s own identity as an emerging African actor and how this will be defined and managed in the deliberations of Pretoria s current two-year UNSC occupancy. In view of the aforementioned set of issues, this think piece is developed as part of the ongoing debate analysing South Africa s increasing political and economic footprint as a member of the emerging powers global networks and alliances. Indeed, from this perspective, South Africa s overall behaviour within the UNSC for forms part of this assessment of Pretoria s voting patterns and issues of common interests in terms of convergence and divergence with its fellow emerging partners sitting on the UNSC. In part this think piece reflects on the parallels and contradictions which arise with Pretoria s stance: on the one hand, advancing the African agenda at the UNSC and, on the other hand, upholding its diplomacy as a member of the emerging powers club. For all intents and purposes, South Africa s current tenure within the UNSC holds significant opportunities for how Pretoria manages this dual identity. 28

35 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances South Africa s second coming 15 : UNSC Certainly South Africa s current membership in the UNSC will be different from its occupancy, not least because this time around Pretoria has entered the UNSC as a fully-fledged member of BRICS, BASIC and the G20. Moreover, unlike previously, the current character of the UNSC is comprised of the IBSA 3 and the B5 (BRICS countries), which clearly gives the impression that these emerging powers will play a critical role in shaping and influencing decisionmaking processes and outcomes of the UNSC. At least this was the perceived mainstream domestic and international opinion on the current line-up of permanent and non-permanent members within the UNSC. In fact it has been often asserted that with China and Russia being permanent members of the UNSC with veto power, it was likely that the political leverage of the B5 could be greatly enhanced to advance their voice as a countervailing bloc to the P3 (the United States, Britain and France) within the UNSC. And in this context South Africa s second coming has been underlined by vacillating views around the human rights dimensions of Pretoria s foreign policy ideals and its more realist aspiration aligned to its national interests. The provocation that surrounds South Africa s second tenure on the UNSC is whether Pretoria will seek to be a leader in its own right or will be influenced by the competing interests of its emerging power allies. This, notwithstanding the interconnectedness of wanting to be identified as a legitimate actor representing Africa and the global South in its quest for global social justice and political reform. It is perhaps the mirror in which post-apartheid South Africa defines its own ideals and aspirations (linked to the Freedom Charter, the premise of the antiapartheid struggle and the Mandela legacy) that places South Africa s own reflection between a rock and a hard place. Clearly, then, trying to manifest its foreign policy within the image of a moral high ground and a sovereign state with vested national and geo-strategic interests lays bare the criticism that South Africa appears to be punching above its weight. Yet, trying to justify its decisions and support for certain resolutions has also amplified South Africa s vulnerabilities when it comes to defending its voting patterns or positions adopted within the UNSC. Eusebius McKaiser best describes this weakness in gauging and understanding South Africa s foreign policy as poor public diplomacy and communication in selling an idea to the court of international public opinion as well as selling it to South African citizens 16. McKaiser expands on this argument by highlighting that this inability leads to a more embedded problem of not being able to clearly articulate what principles inform our thinking around foreign policy. Yet in the context of multi-polarity, the South African government, just like its emerging power partners, has stuck to an inherently cautious, though explicitly 29

36 south africa in the un security council normative value-laden approach of non-interference, cooperation, mutual benefit, peace and stability, and interdependent development. The latter serves as a foundation for embedding a like-minded foreign policy perspective that resonates with what Pretoria sees as corresponding to the ambitions of countries in the global South or the developing world in pursuing their rightful place in the international system. And herein lies the dilemma: how does Pretoria reconcile this normative perspective with the unavoidable exigencies of realpolitik? Nowhere is this more apparent than in the context of South Africa s own identity as an African actor globally but more controversially within the African continent itself. Inevitably, South Africa s performance in the current tenure of its membership on the UNSC will be determined by how it reconciles these paradoxes and the extent to which it is able to convince the critics that it is not merely a status quo power but rather seeks to be a pivotal state in leveraging its position in the UNSC. South Africa s performance so far So far, South Africa s performance on the UNSC has not been without controversy. The first real litmus test for South Africa was perhaps the Libyan crisis, which not only tested Pretoria s mettle in terms of whether it was going to follow its BRIC partners, but also revealed how the influence of the other two African members (Gabon and Nigeria) on the UNSC may have shaped South Africa s behaviour in respect of the response to the situation in Libya. At the outset it must be noted that South Africa s admission into BRIC was considered in certain public spaces of international and domestic opinion as the beginning of the end of Pretoria s human rights dimension in its foreign policy agenda. The fact that Pretoria chose to bed down with China and Russia who are viewed less favourably in this regard was deemed as a fait accompli. Of course this became the mainstream view, although UN resolution 1973, which imposed a no fly zone over Libya, called for an immediate cease-fire and enforced a freeze on funds and other financial and economic assets controlled and/or owned by Libyan authorities, including those of the Gadaffi family, tilted this perspective somewhat. The authorisation of Resolution 1973 illustrated a significant set of issues for South Africa s position in BRICS as it relates to how common geo-strategic interests intersect amongst the BRIC members. Alongside Germany, Brazil, Russia, China and India abstained from voting for Resolution While all members of the Security Council have condemned the actions of the Gadaffi regime against its own people who are demanding peaceful change and political reform, the interpretation and implementation of Resolution 1973 has raised a set of sensitivities and ambivalence. This is not only evident amongst the Security Council members but has revealed an incoherency between the BRIC/IBSA 30

37 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances countries and South Africa, with Pretoria throwing its support behind the US, UK and France by voting in favour of the resolution. As much as the Zuma presidency wanted to demonstrate an independent foreign policy voice and probably assert that it has not lost its moral responsibility, the military intervention under Resolution 1973 has definitely posed a dilemma for Pretoria with its BRIC partners. But it also exposed several other inconsistencies for the BRICS/IBSA nexus on the UNSC. The first issue in this regard was the actual implementation of Resolution 1973 in practice and the implications thereof in exacerbating the protracted nature of the Libyan crisis. As much as the other BRIC members have criticised the military intervention as an act of aggression against the people of Libya even though it falls within the ambit of the UN s responsibility to protect doctrine, especially where citizens are at political risk and threatened by the government in power, their criticisms fell short of their mark. This was because while the other BRIC states condemned the actual operation as being disproportionate with more civilian lives endangered through the air strikes, they did not vote against the resolution but rather abstained. This raises a question as to why in this case abstention was conceived as a better choice than a vote against the resolution. Surely a vote against the resolution would have sent a clearer signal about the costs of human lives. Moreover, it should not be lost that even India and Brazil, which make up IBSA, a group that prides itself as predicated on the democratic dividend, have remained muted on the vote regarding Resolution This leads to the second issue of why South Africa broke ranks with its emerging power allies. Perhaps this was in line with Pretoria s African agenda focus on the UNSC. With the other two African countries representatives lending their support to the Resolution, it may have been in South Africa s interests to demonstrate to the AU and other African allies that it remains committed to the African consensus on African solutions to African problems. But it is hard to see how Resolution 1973 was going to achieve the African consensus given that it actually complicated the African Union roadmap. Yet the thrust of South Africa s behaviour with regard to Resolution 1973 exposes the third consequence in Pretoria s faux pax regarding the Libyan crisis. By throwing its lot in with France, the UK and the USA, South Africa has sent mixed messages about the human rights agenda that the Zuma presidency wants to uphold. This demonstrates that while Pretoria may have been influenced by the responsibility to protect argument where a dictatorship is committing human rights abuses against its own citizens, it does not offset the reality that the military intervention has its own human right consequences, of which ordinary Libyan people bear the brunt. Could it be that Pretoria s calculus on the Libyan debacle was diplomatically miscalculated? Or maybe that in dealing with the crisis the Zuma presidency 31

38 south africa in the un security council misjudged its own position between the African agenda and the emerging powers consensus? Whatever the motivations for how South Africa positioned itself regarding the Libyan crisis, it does indicate that South Africa has shown that it is unpredictable when it comes to consistency in upholding the human rights dimension of its foreign policy agenda. This is evident by a set of contradictory positions that the Zuma administration has demonstrated since taking office in On the one hand, President Zuma seeks to maintain the principles of national sovereignty and non-interference, but, on the other hand, he tends to advocate that his presidency is committed to the primary objectives of ensuring that the ideals of democracy, human rights, and justice are upheld. Consider also the context of the African agenda in regard to Egypt and Côte d Ivoire and the mixed bag of foreign policy responses. While President Zuma aligned with the international community in calling for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, in the face of the post electoral crisis in Côte d Ivoire, the Zuma presidency sat on the fence and pushed for a government of unity to resolve the stalemate, thereby indicating that it did not recognise Alassane Ouattara s legitimate victory in the November 2010 elections. South Africa only changed its position in early March 2011 when it endorsed a call of the Peace and Security Council of the AU for the defeated incumbent Laurent Gbagbo to step down. Whether considering the influence of Russia in stalling the Ivorian crisis from reaching the UNSC or whether the situation in Egypt did not constitute enough of a threat to be considered by the UNSC, these situations expose the vulnerabilities of when and where the emerging actors will push an agenda. And in the case of South Africa, how Pretoria sifts through this maze in terms of the interests underpinning the African agenda and if, indeed, the UNSC is the right platform for these situations to be addressed. Or better still, should it be debated elsewhere in the UN system? IBSA and the Syrian situation Now it seems that South Africa is again at the forefront of another peace and stability mission under the auspices of IBSA. The recent IBSA mission to Damascus could be interpreted as a side intervention of the UNSC when India served as the rotational monthly president. But maybe it was also buoyed by the fact that the three countries represent the troika of democratic states in the global South. Perhaps what distinguishes the IBSA mission was that it appeared to be convened as pushing forward and trying to persuade the Assad government to take seriously the implementation of the resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council on 29 April What the IBSA mission to Syria conveyed is some strategic 32

39 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances thinking amongst the IBSA member-states that maybe it is easier to manage and play an effective normative role around peace and stability outside of the banner of the UNSC so as to avoid conflicting interests that may undermine such efforts. Broadly aligned to Pretoria s aversion to mission creep, that not all issues warrant the UNSC s deliberations, the IBSA mission to Syria in part suggested that while the UNSC has decided to invoke a stronger stance towards Syria, it also opens up the space for the emerging powers bloc alliances like IBSA to utilise their instrumental political kudos with the global South and to use their soft power efficacy more efficiently in pushing forward the peace and stability intervention in Syria. This may be seen as welcoming by recalcitrant states that refuse to be bullied by the West and therefore more endearing towards alliances like IBSA and/or BRICS. In hindsight the IBSA mission to Damascus did not really sway the Assad government to uphold a commitment to political reforms and multiparty democracy. In fact, in view of the current state of events in Syria, the Assad regime has remained belligerent. This again puts the respect for human rights and international human rights law at the centre of the debate about whether the continued violation of these global norms will push the UNSC to decide on a course of action against the Assad government as in the case of Libya? Or will the UNSC this time around give the UN Human Rights Council the necessary leverage to carry out its mandate? In this view what will be the response of the IBSA troika? Will the IBSA countries speak with a cohesive voice and ask that they continue to be allowed to conduct their diplomatic mission to Damascus as part of their ongoing negotiating strategies in brokering a settlement to the conflict? How will China and Russia respond to such a request? Will they align to the IBSA mission or will they remain on the periphery? Then finally, consideration must be given to how long before the Western P3 may decide that their stance towards Damascus needs to be hardened? And what will be the outcome? Some important reflections Both the Libyan and Syrian situations represent significant considerations for the emerging actors and South Africa in their quest to become more than just status quo powers on the UNSC. More importantly it signifies a set of strategic calculi in how the performance of South Africa and the emerging actors (especially India and Brazil) will dovetail in their pursuit of securing the coveted prize of a permanent seat on a reformed UNSC and convince the global community that their positions as permanent members of the UNSC can actually lead to tangible set of reform measures from within. This is especially so in terms of how their alignment to issues and support will influence the vote of major blocs like the G77+ China when it comes to deciding on the extended membership of the expanded UNSC. 33

40 south africa in the un security council For South Africa this situation is even more acute because of how it positions itself as an emerging African actor. The big question for Pretoria is when will it choose to be an African actor and when will it deem it more expedient to identify itself as an emerging Southern actor. And better still how will these configurations in Pretoria s current tenure in the UNSC be shaped by the overarching preoccupation that the support of the Western Bloc is also crucial for South Africa s lobby for a permanent seat on the UNSC? This then brings us back to the AU s Ezulwini Consensus regarding the extended membership of the UNSC. With South Africa being considered as one of the two candidates, it just maybe that the country is not entirely certain that its candidacy will be guaranteed or a fixed one. For now the real issue on the UNSC, amongst the G4 and African contenders, is really about shoring up enough support to make it into the UNSC. Yet unlike its emerging power partners (namely India and China), South Africa s contention is not yet sealed under the Ezulweni Proposal. As the AU contemplates the options and depending on what kind of structure is approved for the African bloc in the UNSC, South Africa and other African contenders face the following challenge regarding how Africa will be represented, as highlighted by Jakkie Cilliers: It is quite probable that once Africa secures two permanent or semi-permanent seats on an expanded UNSC, the common African position on UN reform will be amended to allow for rotation between key countries to serve on the Council, ideally on an elected basis. In this sense, the road to a permanent seat for South Africa, Nigeria and even Egypt does not start in New York but rather Addis Ababa. (2011). 17 Clearly then for South Africa the stakes are not only complex but also foreshadow the possibility that Pretoria finds itself in a less envious position than its emerging power allies since it may have to share the permanent position on the UNSC with other African members, on a rotational basis. This, indeed, raises the question of what leverage and lobby will Pretoria use in Addis Ababa to develop closer alignment with significant African countries within the AU that may support its proposal of being the one permanent member of the UNSC under the Ezulwini Consensus while the second African member can be elected on a rotational basis. Will other African countries lend their support to such a configuration? Will Pretoria mount a serious diplomatic offensive within the various African regional groupings like ECOWAS, COMESA, EAC and SADC to rally and secure their support for this new arrangement under the Ezulwini Consensus as it did in its BRIC offensive? Or will Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa come to a compromised consensus that they will share the two positions on a rotational basis and then lobby their way to Addis Ababa? Finally, consideration should be given to how South Africa may leverage its alliances with BRICS, IBSA and other global groupings in this regard. 34

41 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances Such issues will definitely feature as South Africa moves into the second year of its UNSC occupancy in Whether South Africa decides to push the boundaries remains to be seen, as well as whether Pretoria decides that certain issues would be better served in other platforms of the UN rather than the UNSC. Conclusion With 2012 approaching, reflections on South Africa s performance in the UNSC will undoubtedly continue to be the subject of different opinions and debates. As the composition of the non-permanent members on the UNSC will change in 2012, the emerging powers dynamic on the Council will not be as prominent like it was in Brazil s term ends at the end of What it does suggest, though, is that the focus on the emerging powers dimension at the UNSC cannot be ignored as India and South Africa will still remain as non-permanent members for 2012 but also for future reference. The expectation that the BRICS or IBSA bloc can and will vote as a homogeneous group with a collective outcome is to assume that these countries will put their group interests over and above their national interests and regional identities. Second, there is an assumption that the UNSC is democratically informed and therefore the emerging powers presence should align to a certain muted code of conduct. This is perhaps unfair in one respect since the UNSC is not democratically informed but also disingenuous on the hand other since the P5, based on their own historical performance at the UNSC, have in their various capacities acted based on their own geo-strategic and self-interests. Third, the influence of the residual Cold War dynamics in the UNSC also creates a new set of complexities as the principle of non-interference and respect for sovereignty could be interpreted as a way for the emerging powers to try and refashion how the UNSC operates. Finally, the notion that the emerging powers dimension is going to have a significant impact on the UNSC is perhaps premature. Right now the more immediate concern for those emerging actors like India, Brazil, and South Africa will be to get their foot in the door as permanent members. And this will remain the more short-term goal. Speculation on how their behaviour and performance will influence trends on the UNSC can only be measured from a long-term perspective. And so the focus of the emerging powers dimension on the UNSC is perhaps more of a media discussion and scholarship debate. 35

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43 SOUTH AFRICA S FOREIGN POLICY: PROMOTING THE AFRICAN AGENDA IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL Aubrey Matshiqi Setting the scene In an article written for Foreign Affairs in 1993, just before the dawn of democracy in South Africa in 1994, Nelson Mandela, the first president of democratic South Africa, said: As the 1980s drew to a close I could not see much of the world from my prison cell, but I knew it was changing. There was little doubt in my mind that this would have a profound impact on my country, on the Southern African region and the continent of which I am proud to be a citizen. Although this process of global change is far from complete, it is clear that all nations will have boldly to recast their nets if they are to reap any benefit from international affairs in the post-cold War era. 18 Mandela, who was articulating the foreign policy position of the African National Congress (ANC), listed the following as the key pillars of foreign policy in a post-apartheid South Africa: 19 that issues of human rights are central to international relations and an understanding that they extend beyond the political, embracing the economic, social and environmental; that just and lasting solutions to the problems of humankind can only come through the promotion of democracy worldwide; that considerations of justice and respect for international law should guide the relations between nations; that peace is the goal for which all nations should strive, and where this breaks down, internationally agreed and nonviolent mechanisms, including effective arms-control regimes, must be employed; that the concerns and interests of the continent of Africa should be reflected in our foreign-policy choices; that economic development depends on growing regional and international economic cooperation in an interdependent world. A few things are worth noting about Mandela s statement: First, the values articulated in the 1993 article were intended to be the core element of the DNA of the foreign policy of a post-apartheid state. Second, the fact that Mandela reflected on the post-cold War global order from a prison cell is not insignificant. 37

44 south africa in the un security council It, in part, explains why he and his party, the ANC, placed such a high premium on the imperatives of freedom, democracy and human rights. Furthermore, it is clear that, for Mandela, freedom is indivisible to the extent that democracy must be enjoyed by all of humankind. Third, he took up the reins as the first president of a democratic South Africa at a time when, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the balance of global power was shifting decisively towards the West. Fourth, the process of global change is as incomplete today as it was then. This has implications for how South Africa prosecutes international relations because the current shifts in the global system in the context of emerging economic powers such as China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Russia are incomplete and unpredictable, and it is not a given that they will deliver a complete reconfiguration of global power. In other words, there is no guarantee that the shifts will result in a more equitable, less unethical or more ethical global order. There is, therefore, no guarantee that the African continent will move from the periphery to the centre of the global system. Fifth, the African agenda was, from day one, intended to be one of the key pillars of the foreign policy of post-apartheid South Africa. But, is South Africa s African agenda Africa s agenda? Sixth, South Africa s performance as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) ( and ) must, in part, be understood in terms of the political settlement which gave birth to its constitutional democracy. Democracy in South Africa was delivered through peaceful negotiations. Finding peaceful solutions is, for this reason, the dominant logic in South Africa s approach to conflict prevention and resolution. However, the fact that some still regard the South African political settlement as a miracle of South African exceptionalism may render the country susceptible to errors associated with the exceptionalist impulse, the diplomatic sins of the naive, and the arrogance and vanity of the overly confident foreign policy actor. Seventh, the ANC came to power on the basis of compromise with the aim of building a society that, in terms of its moral, cultural, social, political and economic content, would be the antithesis of apartheid society. For this reason, social and economic justice, democracy and human rights would constitute the dominant foreign policy values of a post-apartheid society coming into being. The tension between this noble goal and the realpolitik of international affairs constitutes a difficult challenge in the implementation of foreign policy. Expectations are not valueless Despite her isolation, apartheid South Africa was in the Western corner. It is partly for this reason, and the fact that South Africa has the largest white population on the continent, that there is an expectation on the part of some, both inside and outside the country, that the foreign policy positions of the ANC government should mirror the interests of Western powers. In addition, the foreign policy of post-apartheid South Africa must navigate the tension between the foreign policy expectations of what former president, Thabo Mbeki, referred to as two nations one belonging to the Western, and the other to the African and so-called Third 38

45 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances World spheres of influence. Also, the fact that the numerical minority of South Africa has become the cultural majority is an important component of the foreign policy discourse. The interests and world view of the cultural majority shape, and sometimes even distort, the content of the intellectual, political, social, cultural, language, legal, moral and economic discourse in a manner that belies its size. Furthermore, the cultural majority tries to impose a canon of rational opinion according to which ideas that threaten its position are deemed irrational. In fact, international relations are almost always about the power, influence and reach of a global cultural majority that, despite current shifts in the global system, is still located at the core of the system. It is partly for this reason that foreign policy issues such as the Syrian crisis and the Iranian nuclear energy controversy lend themselves to the selective morality and perception, and the false consciousness, of foreign policy actors and observers. For instance, the Western and non-western components of the UNSC are cast either in the role of the villain or angel of the foreign policy piece depending on the vantage point of the beholder. It is for this reason that the interests of the permanent members are invoked selectively and dishonestly. It is also for this reason that the Western media will highlight the fact that the danger posed by Iran must be understood in terms of its proxies, particularly terrorist organisations that are supposedly sponsored by the Iranian government. But, there is very little enthusiasm for the fact that the Saudi regime is, among other things, a proxy of Western interests and oppressive regimes in the Middle East. What all of this masks is the fact that, in the foreign policy arena, we are dealing with angels with horns and demons with haloes on their heads. This applies to a lesser or greater degree to all permanent and non-permanent members of the Security Council. But, it would be reductionist in the extreme to suggest that all white people are part of the Western sphere of influence and that all black people are part of a counter-hegemonic foreign policy project. It would also be extremely simplistic to argue that a particular sphere of influence is inherently moral/ethical or inherently immoral/unethical. That said, we cannot run away from the fact that the South Africa of Nelson Mandela set very lofty and ambitious goals for itself when it comes to the moral and ethical content of human relations. This is why, both opportunistically and genuinely, there is an expectation that the content of South Africa s foreign policy should place a high premium on human rights and democratic dividends. But such expectations are not always valueless. That is why foreign policy positions that coincide with Western interests are sometimes deemed to be synonymous with the moral and ethical. Also, there is an expectation, both consciously and unconsciously, from elements of the cultural majority that South Africa should be an extension of the foreign policy positions of Western countries, particularly the English-speaking parts of the West. But what then informs or should shape the foreign policy content of the ANC government? 39

46 south africa in the un security council The pillars of South Africa s foreign policy The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation sets out its vision as follows: Our vision is an African Continent, which is prosperous, peaceful, democratic, nonracial, nonsexist and united, and which contributes to a world that is just and equitable. 20 The department further articulates as its mission the commitment to promoting South Africa s national interests and values, the African Renaissance and the creation of a better world for all. 21 Its strategic objectives are: 22 Through bilateral and multilateral interactions protect and promote South African national interests and values; Conduct and co-ordinate South Africa s international relations and promote its foreign policy objectives; Monitor international developments and advise government on foreign policy and related domestic matters; Protect South Africa s sovereignty and territorial integrity; Contribute to the formulation of international law and enhance respect for the provisions thereof; Promote multilateralism to secure a rules-based international system. A discussion document that was published by the Department of Foreign Affairs during the first term of the democratic government posited the following conception of foreign policy: Foreign policy is a multidimensional set of policies, objectives, principles, strategies and plans which cannot easily be packaged into a neatly described formula. It is also not always practical to distinguish between aspirations, general objectives and underlying philosophy. Nevertheless, it is important to consider in broad terms the general orientation of South Africa s policies. A broad approach, supported by a range of more detailed and sometimes complex components, forms the policy framework adopted in this discussion document. 23 The conception of foreign policy contained in the discussion document was prophetic because, as the democratic government has since learnt from bitter experience, what it says about its foreign policy values and principles is easier said than done. It also does not help that idealist conceptions of international relations seldom leave the textbook page. In the real world, realist conceptions of the national interest reign supreme. The normative seldom becomes the dominant reality in international affairs a state of affairs that is worsened by the fact that international relations is refracted through the lens of high diplomacy and the interests of the powerful, with civil society and ordinary citizens on the margins. 40

47 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances It is for these reasons that it is no exaggeration to opine that, in the realm of international relations, the moral high ground is a vacant plot. South Africa, the UNSC and the African agenda Given the fact that the moral high ground is a vacant plot, any agenda, including the African agenda, to the extent that it exists, must not be analysed in isolation from other agendas. That said, we must avoid errors in analysis that come with seeing an imperialist plot under every Western bed. That would be as bad as positions that permanently deny the existence of such plots. With regard to the African agenda, the question is whether South Africa s understanding of the African agenda can transcend the things that divide the continent. In 2010, South Africa achieved two international relations coups. First, she was elected for a second stint as a non-permanent member of the UNSC. Second, she became a member of the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) group of countries. It is in this regard that the complexity of the foreign policy decision-making process and South Africa s complex foreign policy identity has come to the fore. Some commentators have suggested that South Africa s foreign policy is both coherent and confusing. But, it is the Libyan and Ivorian crises that have led to the foregrounding of the complex and/or confusing nature of South Africa s foreign policy. In the case of Côte d Ivoire, South Africa acted in a manner consistent with her commitment to multilateralism by seeking consensus within the African Union (AU). In the process, she found herself adopting a position at variance with that of the UN, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Nigeria. Worse still, the South African position seemed to be in conflict with the 2010 election result, and, therefore, the will of the majority of Ivorian voters. While the manner in which South Africa went about seeking consensus within the AU was not unproblematic, that her intention was to operate within the multilateral context of the AU in a manner consistent with her understanding, mistaken or otherwise, of the African agenda cannot be questioned. Therefore, the fact that the result was a divided AU is not entirely South Africa s fault. However, South Africa s positioning in the UNSC and her avowed commitment to the African agenda, must be understood more in terms of the complexity of her foreign policy choices and less in terms of the criticism that she is pusillanimous in her relations with countries such as China and Russia. What constitutes South Africa s African agenda? Is it an agenda the country is pursuing with any level of success? According to Chris Landsberg, in a paper that was commissioned as part of a review of fifteen years of democracy in South Africa, the African agenda is based on the understanding that socio-economic development cannot take place 41

48 south africa in the un security council without political peace and stability, and these according to Landsberg, are prerequisites for socio-economic development. 24 Furthermore, he argues that South Africa s African agenda goals include: 25 Strengthening the African Union and its structures, including supporting the harmonisation and rationalisation of RECs; strengthening the governance capacity of the AU; supporting the Pan-African Parliament (PAP); establishing AU financial institutions; engaging the African Diaspora; facilitating implementation of the AU Gender Declaration; supporting the implementation of NEPAD, including the operationalisation of NEPAD priority sectors, namely infrastructure, agriculture, environment, tourism, ICT, health, human resources and science and technology, and their integration with AU and SADC processes, and at national level throughout the continent; and operationalising the African Peer Review Mechanism. Contributing to post-conflict reconstruction and development (PCRD) in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan. Contributing towards peace, security and stability in Africa through: establishing the African Standby Force; supporting stabilisation efforts in Western Sahara; supporting peace operations in Côte d Ivoire; and strengthening bilateral relations. These are elements of the African agenda that are usually associated with the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. In a statement that was issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs in December 2009 at the end of South Africa s first tenure ( ) as an elected nonpermanent member of the UNSC, it was argued that: South Africa s central strategic objective was to help advance the African agenda, but it also actively engaged on all issues on the Security Council s agenda pursuant to the global mandate associated with Council membership. South Africa achieved leadership positions, for example as lead nation on Timor-Leste and head of a key Security Council mission to Africa. South Africa also influenced a large number and diversity of Council outcomes. 26 The then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, according to the statement, said, The Security Council was a useful platform for intensifying the work South Africa had already undertaken in conflict resolution in Sudan, Côte d Ivoire, Burundi, the DRC and elsewhere. One of the primary achievements was helping to revitalise the debate on the relationship between the UN and regional organisations and enhancing co-ordination between the UN and 42

49 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances the African Union. South Africa also forged partnerships with Council and non-council members from across the so-called North-South divide on important matters, such as Security Sector Reform, the non-proliferation of light weapons and gender mainstreaming. In another assessment of how South Africa performed in relation to the African agenda, Landsberg maintains that: South Africa handled its international relations much more strategically, choosing to identify and build relationships with key strategic partner countries in each region of Africa. The strategic partners were those countries that more often than not shared interests with South Africa and were crucial for continental unity and renewal. In this regard, South Africa has sought to enhance its relationship with countries like Nigeria, Senegal and the Ivory Coast in West Africa; Algeria and Tunisia in the North; Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa; Gabon and the DRC in Central Africa; Mauritius in the Indian Ocean; and most southern African states. In many cases, South Africa has succeeded in cultivating these strategic partnerships and using them to drive the agenda for continental development and integration. 27 In February 2011, President Jacob Zuma said: 28 The African agenda remains our key policy focus. South Africa is serving a two year term on the African Union Peace and Security Council. The country will chair the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security from August. In this role, we will continue to engage the parties in the implementation of the Global Political Agreement in Zimbabwe and the development of a roadmap to elections. We will also promote the resolution of the Malagasy conflict. We will monitor and assist where possible to ensure that the political and security situation in the DRC is conducive to elections. We are also honoured to participate in finding solutions to the situation in Côte d Ivoire, as a member of the African Union High Level Panel chosen to help resolve the challenges in that country. We applaud the work of the South African National Defence Force, which has on average deployed over military personnel in peacekeeping operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sudan and the Central African Republic. We will continue to participate in the revitalisation of the New Partnership for Africa s Development with specific focus on the implementation of its infrastructure programme, of which we champion the North-South infrastructure development corridor. South Africa has taken note of the unfolding developments in Egypt as well as the earlier events in Tunisia. We continue to monitor the situation closely, including its implications for the Middle East and North Africa. We firmly believe that the course and the content of the transition as well as the destiny that these sister countries choose, should be authored by them. 43

50 south africa in the un security council However, not everyone shares these glowing and sanguine accounts of how South Africa has performed on the foreign policy and African agenda fronts. In fact, South Africa s positions in the UNSC have been condemned by many, both domestically and globally. Furthermore, the Libyan and Côte d Ivoire crises have exposed both a convergence and divergence of foreign policy positions between South Africa and countries such as Nigeria and regional groups such as ECOWAS. For instance, in a Daily Maverick article titled, Wanted: A new foreign policy for South Africa, Sipho Hlongwane argues that, Under Mandela and Mbeki, it was clearly a case of you don t let go of old friends, no matter how rotten they are. Under Zuma, we are adding an element of schoolyard bullying to our interactions with other African countries. Zuma is currently on a collision course with ECOWAS, most of the AU, the UN, the EU and the US. He can t hope to survive a battering from all four with a big smile on his face. South Africa can t afford to go down that route. 29 In the same vein, an article in The Economist argued that, These days South Africa s foreign policy swings back and forth. Under Thabo Mbeki, Mr Zuma s globe-trotting predecessor, it seemed to have an overarching aim, at least on paper: the promotion of an African renaissance, even if that meant ignoring the human-rights violations of some of South Africa s allies. But now, as Mr Zuma flits ever more energetically around the world, charming everyone as he always does, it is hard to find a pattern to his policies. 30 Furthermore, says The Economist, South Africa often appears to be pursuing two contradictory sets of values. At one moment, Mr Zuma is upholding the principles of national sovereignty and non-interference dear to despots around the world. At the next, he insists that his primary objective is to contribute to the ideals of democracy, human rights and justice. The result is a mishmash of unpredictable responses to apparently similar situations in different countries. 31 The two articles were written in response to South Africa s positions on Côte d Ivoire and Libya. While the essence of these arguments may be correct, they are not completely accurate. That South Africa s foreign policy choices are informed by an aversion to regime change if it results from external intervention as opposed to the will of the people, a commitment to African solutions for African problems and foreign policy choices within a multilateral context, is generally predictable. What is not predictable is whether specific foreign policy choices will be consistent with values such as a commitment to democracy and human rights. Why did South Africa vote in support of resolution 1973? Apparently, there were two reasons: First, South Africa needed to redeem herself given her supposedly inglorious performance during the stint as a non-permanent member of the UNSC. Some commentators have argued that support for Resolution 1973 was an attempt to mitigate the damage that 44

51 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances her image had suffered because of the perceived betrayal of her commitment to human rights on issues such Zimbabwe and Myanmar. 32 Second, there were suggestions in the foreign policy rumour mill that President Jacob Zuma had been duped into supporting Resolution 1973 by US president, Barack Obama, in exchange for supporting South Africa s ambition to become a permanent member of the UNSC. This is probably untrue on two counts: First, the expansion of the group of UNSC permanent members is not imminent. Second, because it is not imminent, Obama is in no position to lock future US administrations into such an agreement. What is important, however, is the fact that such explanations ignore the complexity of South Africa s relations and the impact, for ill or good, they have on the content of her foreign policy decisions. The Libyan crisis is a good example of this. South Africa is a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU), a member of the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) group of countries, a member of BRICS, an emerging power (albeit a small one with limited material capabilities), and a part of the global South. The fact that this presupposes the management of a set of relations and interests that overlap and intersect and which, at times, are simultaneously convergent and divergent, and, therefore, are complex and contradictory, should be a no-brainer. It is when the management of these interests and relations produces outcomes that are in conflict with the interests of others and the moral expectations of constituencies inside and outside South Africa that the mitigation of these interests and relations becomes a daunting task. Daunting or not, that, on balance, South Africa s foreign policy positions should reflect her commitment to human rights, democracy and the African agenda is not an unreasonable expectation even if, from time to time, this is at variance with the interests of one or more permanent members of the UNSC. This means that South Africa must at times assert her independence, and even provide leadership, within the constraints that are imposed by a combination of her material incapabilities and the different multilateral and bilateral contexts within which she must prosecute her foreign policy. At the same time, South Africa must do careful calculations about when it is in her interests to lead from behind. To this end, how should we understand South Africa s UNSC agenda? According to commentators such as Olivier Serrao, 33 South Africa s agenda in the UNSC is motivated by the following goals: Pushing the African agenda on the basis of AU and SADC mandates and the South African national interest. But we must remember that the interests of the continent are not a lump of clay. Sometimes strategic competition, as opposed to strategic cooperation, comes into play in the management of the inter-state dimension of intra-continental relations. As the chair of the UNSC Working Group on Conflict Prevention in Africa, and as one of the countries that facilitated the 2010 Peacebuilding 45

52 south africa in the un security council Commission Review, South Africa must align her interventions with the goals of the AU Peace and Security Council. The prevention of mandate creep by the permanent members of the UNSC. Linking development to the imperative of dealing with threats to international peace and security. However, South Africa does not always support such broad interpretations of the UNSC mandate. It is for this reason that, at times, as exemplified by the Myanmar case, South Africa has supported the devolution of certain decisions to other UN agencies. Pursuing the agenda of reforming and democratising the UN, and the expansion of the number of UNSC permanent members in accordance with the 2005 AU position of two additional non-permanent members and two additional permanent members with a right to veto. In short, something that will probably never happen. As alluded to above, there are times when South Africa s pursuit of the African agenda, as evidenced by her position on Resolution 1973 and NATO s interpretation thereof, is in conflict with the interests of all or some of her BRICS partners. This also means that there will be times when IBSA is the fault-line that defines the divergence of interests in BRICS. As some have argued, China and Russia, when it comes to advancing their interests, have the same genetic material as the other three permanent UNSC members. The mutations that have occurred over the decades are seldom significant in relation to the African agenda, something that is worsened by the reality of Africa s and South Africa s material incapabilities. The question is whether the shifts we are currently seeing in the global system are going to result in a fundamental mutation of the DNA of the UNSC. If this is not going to happen, we must be open to the possibility that realist conceptions and applications of international relations will, one day, lead to the demise of the United Nations. But where does this leave the African agenda? The recent failure by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and the incumbent, Jean Ping, to win a two-thirds majority in the race to head the AU Commission is but another indicator of how divided the continent is. Also, it was another indication of South Africa s failure to read the balance of forces in the AU. If this problem persists, it will be difficult for South Africa to influence the content of the African agenda. That notwithstanding, we must avoid the errors of fatalistic and deterministic variants of Afro-pessimism because the African agenda is still a work in progress. At the same time, we must not under-estimate the enormity of the challenge and the limitations imposed by the fact that the African agenda is a project of leaders who, in many parts of the continent, make foreign policy choices that are not informed by the will of ordinary Africans. 46

53 promoting the african agenda in a sea of multiple identities and alliances Conclusion This paper seeks to explain, not to justify, South Africa s foreign policy choices on key issues. The author is convinced that the following considerations must inform the content of future foreign policy positions: On balance, our foreign policy positions must err on the side of democratic and human rights imperatives. South Africa should not be the poodle of any country or group of countries. Internal South African political, historical, racial, economic and other dynamics should be seen as an integral part of the foreign policy process. Civil society must, to the extent that it is possible and desirable, be seen as an integral part of the foreign policy process. For its part, civil society must see itself as an independent and legitimate component of the foreign policy process. But, we must not pretend that there is no class, racial and cultural bias in the orientation of some elements of civil society. South Africa must have a conversation about whether her foreign policy architecture is sufficiently institutionalised. Finally, there is no doubt that South Africa is committed to the African agenda. What is in doubt is the extent to which her foreign policy choices have, on issues such as Libya and Côte d Ivoire, promoted or undermined the emergence of a common African agenda. Indubitably, Africa remains divided, and this means that South Africa s African agenda will not always be Africa s agenda. 47

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55 NOTES 1 Much of this section is based on a post-mortem of South Africa s UNSC tenure with a look towards carried out with DIRCO by IGD and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) which will be published in a forthcoming strategy dialogue proceedings report by the IGD. 2 VOA News.com, February 20, South Africa unrepentant over UN Security Council Role. 3 Adam Habib, SA has much to prove at UN top table, Sunday Times, October 17, 2010, p. 5. Also see: South Africa s foreign policy: Human rights? What s that? Nelson Mandela s successors have other fish to fry abroad, The Economist, October 14, South Sudan to benefit from India-Brazil-South Africa development fund, Business Day, February 14, Is SA up against a Brics wall? Sunday Times, January 16, Editorial. 6 For example, legal scholar Shadrack Gutto, head of Unisa s Centre for African Renaissance Studies, was a proponent of an independent investigation into the Côte d Ivoire election, a position amplified by questions raised in a Business Day column by Aubrey Matshiqi, Côte d Ivoire poll result is less than cut and dried (31 January 2011), highlighting the UN s predicament in the midst of a power struggle, the outcome of which would be contingent on the ultimately prevailing balance of forces. Others such as Carter Centre senior official, John Stremlau, vouched for the credibility of the UN and other external monitoring of the electoral outcome, while still others questioned an Mbeki-style negotiated unity government solution to the crisis. 7 For an interesting analysis of South Africa s no-fly vote: SA the only Bric in UN s Libyavote wall: Zuma administration finds favours to partners are not returned, by Loyiso Langeni, Business Day, March 22, 2011, p How the West won Control over Africa: The UN Security Council made absolutely sure that it ignored the continent s views on what had to be done to help Libya, by Thabo Mbeki, The Star, April 5, 2011, p. 11. Business Day countered with an April 7, 2011 lead editorial, Mbeki is defending the indefensible accompanied by several letters to the editor weighing in on the former president s take on Africa s sidelined role in the Libyan crisis. 9 Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p See: We don t take charge in Africa, but get very prickly about those who do, by Mondli Makhanya, Sunday Times, April 10, 2011 and African apathy for African problems from Libya to Zim, by Imraan Buccus, Sunday Independent, April 10, Official Communique of April 14, BRICS Leaders Meeting in Sanya on Hainan, People s Republic of China. Bihar Samachar. 14 See speech by Minister Maite Nkoana Mashabane to the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), The Relationship between South Africa and the Emerging Global Powers, 1 November In this speech Minister Mashabane clearly outlines that South Africa s foreign policy perspective under the Zuma presidency is intrinsically aligned to the principles contained 49

56 south africa in the un security council in the Freedom Charter, of which peace and friendship, respect for the rights and sovereignty of other nations, and disputes resolved through negotiations are identified, as the guiding pillars of South Africa s contemporary foreign policy engagements. 15 Phrase coined by Francis Kornegay. 16 See Eusebius McKaiser: Diplomacy Debacle in Libya, Sunday Times, 21 August See Jakkie Cilliers, No More Back Door Diplomacy, The African, August/September 2011: www. the-african.org 18 Nelson Mandela, South Africa s Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, Volume 72, Number 5, 1993, p Ibid, p Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 See, 24 See Chris Landsberg, South Africa s African Agenda : Challenges of Policy and Implementation: A Paper Prepared for the Presidency Fifteen Year Review Project, p Ibid. 26 Statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the Conclusion of South Africa s Term as an Elected Member of the Security Council, 2 January See International Relations, Peace and Security Sector Background Report: For The Fifteen Year Review, prepared by the International Relations, Peace and Security Sector of the Policy Coordination and Advisory Services in The Presidency, p See State of the Nation Address, 2011, 29 Sipho Hlongwane, Wanted: A new foreign policy for South Africa, Daily Maverick, 13 October South Africa s foreign policy all over the place, The Economist, 24 March Ibid. 32 South Africa s position on Myanmar was informed by an attempt to prevent mandate creep. The effect was to compromise her democratic credentials. 33 Olivier Serrao, South Africa in the UN Security Council , Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, June

57 ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE The IGD is an independent foreign policy and international diplomacy think tank dedicated to the analysis of and dialogue on the evolving international political and economic environment, and the role of Africa and South Africa. It advances a balanced, relevant and policy-oriented analysis, debate and documentation of South Africa s role in international relations and diplomacy. The IGD was initially established in 1995 as the Foundation for Global Dialogue after several years of effort led by the former South African president, Nelson Mandela, in his capacity as the president of the African National Congress. He and his team of leaders saw a need for a research organization that would facilitate the new South Africa s engagement with the changing global order after This was a period in which three vectors of change coincided: the tectonic shift in global power politics after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the wave of democratization that hit Africa and South America; and the near miraculous transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa. The initial funding came from the German government and went towards establishing the Foundation s competitive edge, a combination of policy-oriented research, catalytic dialogue, tailor-made publications and grant-making for NGOs interested in international relations. The IGD s research agenda has three broad programmatic focus areas: foreign policy analysis with special reference to the making and management of foreign policy and diplomatic tools like economic, developmental, and public diplomacy; African studies focusing on the role of regional and continental integration in African politics and development as well as the study of peace diplomacy; and international diplomacy, analysing dynamics in international diplomacy that have a bearing on African peace and prosperity. Mission: The IGD strives for a prosperous and peaceful Africa in a progressive global order through cutting edge policy research and analysis, catalytic dialogue and stakeholder interface on global dynamics that have an impact on South Africa and Africa. 51

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