In 1995, a year after the first all-race general election in SA, Nigeria’s military regime hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and activist, for trumped-up charges of orchestrating the killing of Ogoni chiefs. Quite rightly, the world was outraged at this barbaric act, and reacted appropriately.
The Commonwealth, the club of the UK and its former colonies, suspended Nigeria’s membership. Commendably, Nelson Mandela, one of the founding fathers of the new SA, spoke out against this crime.
Since then, our values- and human rights-based foreign policy position has vacillated from the irrational to the ludicrous. In the process, a country like ours, which once held so much promise for the world as an ethical leader, has been reduced to a laughing stock in the international community.
Three things have been sorely missing: values; national interest; and pragmatism.
In the past three decades, we have supported Zanu-PF’s brutal harassment of opposition parties in the name of quiet diplomacy. We continued making excuses when Robert Mugabe, the liberator-turned-dictator, and his Zanu-PF administration rigged one general election after another to prevent them from facing accountability for their misrule. Such misrule has turned that country into an economic tragedy.
Admittedly, as a fresh, wet-behind-the-ears democracy ourselves, we did not raise as much noise as we should have when the Rwandan genocide was unfolding soon after our 1994 settlement. We would go on to take contradictory positions at the UN about the Libyan crisis.
We maintained radio silence when Paul Kagame, the Rwandan life president, continued to harass and rough up his political opponents inside and outside his country. Still in the name of “no interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”
We downgraded our diplomatic relations with the state of Israel in favour of Palestine. When Russia invaded Ukraine last February, we did what has become customary: we had a position for the morning, midday, afternoon and evening. Eventually we reverted to our safe space — fence-sitting, condemning conflict in general terms, and offering ourselves as honest brokers in a conflict in which we have already taken a side.
Since then, we have done nothing tangible about our mediation role, as the conflict continues with attendant humanitarian costs. This is despite our government’s ideological proximity to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. And we closed our ears to the lamenting voices of the Uyghurs despite our close historical relations with the Chinese Communist Party.
In the so-called lost decade (the Jacob Zuma years, 2009-2018), we have de-emphasised our relationships with the West. Despite its contribution, albeit not without controversy, to our anti-apartheid struggle we have treated our association with the West as a dirty little secret.
On Monday, we rolled out a red carpet reception for Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, who is on a four-nation working visit to southern Africa including Angola, eSwatini and Botswana.
From public pronouncements, there is no suggestion that our government has asked Putin, our historical ally, to stop the war in Ukraine. Instead, we watched the world sleepwalk into a nightmarish scenario of a proxy war (pitting Russia against the West vicariously through Ukraine), and chose to demonstrate our lack of alignment by playing war games with the Russian Navy which, as we speak, is busy bombing civilians elsewhere.
Our foreign policy needs a reset.
Three things have been sorely missing: values; national interest; and pragmatism. In 1995, Mandela’s outburst at Saro-Wiwa’s execution was driven by a commitment to a human rights culture and values. Having faced down execution himself, he knew full well the human suffering that comes with hanging people for ideological differences.
Since his passing in 2013, it seems he took to the grave two other attributes: first, he knew what is good for the ANC is not necessarily good for the country; and second, we need to be pragmatic in our pursuit of national interest.
Put differently, it is clear from recent polling that the vast majority of South Africans take a very dim view of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Therefore our incoherent positioning is driven by party, not national interest, and its fear of losing power to left-wing populists such as the EFF.
Our foreign policy requires a radical reset driven by the three tenets: values, national interest and pragmatism. The ANC and our department of international relations & co-operation ought to be braver and trust the instincts of South Africans. It will help it keep better company.
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