14 Feb 2013 | Tony Leon
| Seminar presented by Tony Leon, Stellenbosch
Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS), Wallenberg Research Centre,
Stellenbosch, South Africa
Abstract
The seminar will
elaborate on the final chapter of the recently completed book, “The Accidental
Ambassador - From Parliament to Patagonia” (Pan Macmillan; to be published in
April 2013). The paper attempts to answer the vexed question, in terms of
foreign policy, “Where in the World is South Africa?”
Most of the current
constructs which theoretically underpin foreign policy for this country are
either overblown or incoherent; they do not appropriately define or advance or
prioritise South Africa’s national interests abroad; nor do they acknowledge
the tensions embedded in the clash between normative policies and realpolitik.
Drawing from ‘real
time’ experiences in international diplomacy, the direction, and some of the
dilemmas, South Africa, as a middle-range power in the world, confronts in its
international engagements, will be explored. The cost-effectiveness of South
Africa’s global projection will also be examined, and some practical reforms to
achieve better results in the age of austerity will be suggested.
1. National
and International Institutions “Stress-Tested” by Events.
Warren Buffett, the famed US investor, noted: “Only
when the tide goes out do we see who has been swimming naked.” Many of the
institutions which we built to maintain our countries and the world, and
improve their condition do just fine when growth is up and conflict is down.
But they sometimes fail and falter when they are stress-tested by adverse
currents and rough tides.
The paralysis of the United Nations Security Council
over Syria, the problems for the Eurozone in arresting the fear of debt default
in its southern flank and the difficulty of the G 20 in decisively turning
around the global financial crisis are three instructive examples .This is not
to say that there is either an unwillingness to act or a conspiracy behind
their agendas. Rather it suggests that, objectively, some of the challenges we
face are simply too big for the institutions designed to contain them. There is
much talk, as well, of the decline of the world’s hyper-power, the USA, and whether
this condition is temporary or terminal. Another endless debate concerns
whether China’s rise is assured and what this means to the Pacific and beyond.
The developing world is also “enjoying” a better financial crisis than the
historically developed economies. But however fundamentally these shifts in the
tectonic plates of international economics and diplomacy reset the future world
order, right now we are somewhat suspended in a leaderless world. The political
consultant Ian Bremmer described this new order as the unstable “G. Zero
World.”
I think the above snapshot of the world around us is a
necessary caution before interrogating certain elements, design faults and
implementation challenges which confront South Africa, a middle-ranking world
country, as it finds its place and prominence in the world two decades after we
became again an admired member of the comity of nations after half century of
international isolation and pariah status.
My
diplomatic friend, US Ambassador Vilma Martinez amused her guests one evening
around her dinner table at her palatial Buenos Aires residence by telling us
that, in State Department-speak, “OBE” meant “overtaken by events”.
Although
much of the foreign policy bureaucracy in South Africa and the rest of the world
has been captured, and remains enthralled, by management consultants, with
their emphasis on” business plans”, “mission statements”, “visions” and the entire
gamut of measurable deliverables and other excrescences embedded in the
‘culture of performance’, it is often real time events, especially those which
mushroom into crisis proportions, which test the relevance and limits of any
nation’s external projection.
2. The Theoretical Underpinnings of South
African Foreign Policy: ‘box ticking’, ‘all of the above’, ‘a bit of this and a
bit of that’.
After
three years of trying to decode South Africa’s foreign imperatives and make
sense of its often erratic implementation I thought “overtaken by events” to be
a fair description of our own policy-making and execution. I also thought that
Abba Eban’s famous aphorism about the Palestinians – “they never miss an
opportunity to miss an opportunity”, applied to South Africa’s external
projection.
2.1:
DIRCO 2011-14 Strategic Plan: Africa and the World
On paper – South Africa’s international objectives
are clear enough, if not hugely ambitious and very generalised. When I read my
department’s 2011-2014 Strategic Plan, which covered the period of my
ambassadorship, I realised, soon enough, it was less a user’s road map and more
an exercise in bureaucratic box-ticking.
The
Strategic Plan as a theoretical exercise in country-positioning was perhaps
unobjectionable. It proclaims the vision of the Department of International
Relations and Co-operation (DIRCO), as -
An
African Continent which is prosperous, peaceful, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist
and united and which contributes to a world that is just and equitable.
One
might describe this combination as a summary of South Africa’s constitutional premise
and a normative pitch for a new world order, undergirded by our geographic and strategic
self-identification in and of Africa.
None
of this, given our country’s history, its current political trajectory and the
provenance of it, and our geography, is surprising. Nor is it either new or
even indigenous. Over two centuries ago, Napoleon apparently observed, “Know a
country’s geography and you will soon enough know its foreign policy.”
The
Department’s mission is specifically rooted in Africa, as the promotion of ‘South
Africa’s national interests and values’ is co-terminous with the “African
Renaissance” and the creation of “a better world for all” (the latter
proposition, while unarguably a public good, and hugely ambitious, is simply
the externalisation of the ruling party, ANC, election slogan since 1994, which
promises, domestically, “a better life for all”.)
Indeed
on the pre-eminence of Africa, the first and second of Dirco’s six strategic
priorities which flow from its vision statement are African-centric, viz
Priority I: “Enhanced African Agenda and Sustainable Development”; Priority 2: “Strengthen
Political and Economic Integration of SADC”. Priority 3: “Strengthen
South-South Relations”, might be read as a form of solidarity-seeking with
fellow members of the developing world which share Africa’s international
agenda and aspirations.
However, the two remaining regional and
international priorities (4: “Strengthen Relations with Strategic Formations of
the North” and 5: “Participate in the Global System of Governance”) suggest
that the ‘rest of the world’ is covered by the priorities, but this again
question-begs as to priorities, focus and recognition of limitations of both
resources and political capital.
Using the strategic plan as a guide to our
positioning and prioritisation in the world had clear limits: As a practitioner
of South African statecraft on the Southern cone of South America, I discerned
that we intended to cover the world without admitting, on paper at least, the
need to make tough choices or fix priorities. Were we to place a premium on our
African hinterland? What about our ties with the developed economies of North
America and Europe, our traditional and current major economic partners? Did
the rise of China afford it primacy in our international partnerships? And what
of ‘’the South” (a polite update of the term ‘third world’)? Our accession into
the grouping of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China) presumably meant
that this quartet was where our heart and national interest lay.
In
fact, the strategic plan simply listed the lot of them without distinction and
suggested an African-biased “all of the above” approach.
Even
on the “Africa First” approach there were some objections, at least from some
quarters in the academic world and indeed on an objective read of our country’s
trading and commercial interests which, overwhelmingly, lay to the east and
north of us, rather than to our South.
Jesmond
Blumenfeld, for example, in a paper presented at a recent local colloquium, was
moved to observe:
This
(Dirco) vision has recently been described as emanating from “an underlying philosophy
that ‘South Africa’s destiny is inextricably linked to that of the (Southern
African) region and the rest of Africa.’ However, no evidence has been adduced
to demonstrate the validity of this assertion, nor have any benchmarks been
offered that would permit it to be tested.
Thus,
the interest basis for this apparent pre-eminence for Africa is unclear, at
best. Dirco’s Strategic Plan defines the country’s national values at
length-including commitments to promote human rights, democracy, justice and
international law and conflict resolution, the ‘African Agenda’ (etc.).
However, there is no articulation, at this strategic level, of what constitutes
South Africa’s ‘national interests’ and therefore what foreign policy should
seek to achieve on the country’s (and its citizens) behalf.
Strangely
enough, it is the lesser-mentioned, lowest ranked and general provisions of
Priority 6 (“Strengthen Political and Economic Relations”) which actually forms
the spine and backbone of most of the diplomatic work and effort of South
Africa’s 127 Missions in 108 countries abroad, and which proved in my own diplomatic
efforts to be, by far, the most useful indicator for planning, benchmarking and
implementation of foreign policy. The fact, however, that what the US State
Department terms (and highly prioritises in its work abroad) “economic
statecraft” receives such slight attention in our foreign policy planning is
telling. I deal with this aspect below (see
2.4.1).
2.2
The 2011 White Paper on South Africa’s Foreign Policy: “Building a Better
World: The Diplomacy of Ubuntu.”
There
was some hope and expectation that the promise of a White Paper on South
Africa’s foreign policy would be more definitive and resolute in prioritising
South Africa’s international projection and executing it in a coherent manner.
In fact, in the run up to the publication of
the department’s White Paper which Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane had been heralding
since her first parliamentary budget
speech in office, in March 2010, I rather naively accepted at face value her
invitation to all embassies to prepare a response from our mission to the draft
document. The Minister in her 2010
Budget speech indicated that the White Paper process was to be open and
consultative (a welcome departure from the opaque nature of foreign
policy-making under the previous administration of President Mbeki).
Furthermore, she stated that the purpose of the process was-
To
take stock of our successes as well as lessons learnt where we have perhaps
missed our targets, and to evaluate our capacity in terms of the way forward.
And
so, my colleagues and I laboured away against a tight deadline, and produced, I
thought, a crisp seven-page response and sent it back to head office. We
addressed a range of problems and inconsistencies of foreign policy in practice
which the white paper, far from resolving, did not even admit existed! Our
response, with detailed referencing, pointed out that the 1993 claim of Nelson
Mandela, on the eve of his presidency, that “human rights will be the light
which guides our foreign policy” had been largely observed in the breach and
cited numerous examples of our rights-delinquencies, particularly during our
first term and ill-starred role in the United Nations Security Council which
ended in 2008, which had seen South Africa turn a blind eye to violations of
fundamental rights - from Belarus to Zimbabwe. Our posturing there appeared to
be animated by an anti-western, struggle-solidarity which I termed (to my colleagues
but omitted from the response) “gesture politics.” Needless to note, there was
no acknowledgement from head office to our carefully crafted views and not a
word of them appeared in the revised document.
In
certain areas, for example, condemning the Burmese junta in 2009 for detaining
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (who was subsequently released and
participated in its restored parliament) and taking a tougher line against
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe (to little discernible effect as he enters his
33rd uninterrupted year in power in 2013), South Africa under
president Zuma appeared to have noticed and even acted on some of the
criticisms. However, the hard test for the ‘new approach’ still lay ahead, as I
relate (see 2.4.2, below).
In
the event, the ‘final draft White Paper’ (13 May 2011) neither acknowledged
some of the core dilemmas and shortcomings of previous iterations of foreign
policy. It specifically repeated a lengthy list of national interests, without
stating in which order they would be executed and how they would be realised
abroad. It contained proposals for further bureaucratic building blocks (for
example, the creation of a single agency to channel development aid – the South
African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA) and a South African Council on
International Relations (SACOIR), without defining criteria for its grant
allocations, in the case of the former, or for its constitution and powers in
the case of the latter.
In
the opinion of Ambassador Tom Wheeler, a former South African diplomat and
currently Research Associate at the South African Institute of International
Affairs (SAIIA) –
The
key focuses of South African foreign policy, its African Agenda, South-South
Co-Operation, North-South Dialogue, Multilateral and Economic Diplomacy, and
bilateral relations with individual countries, have been listed on the DIRCO
website for years. Nothing new (in the White Paper) here. Nor is there any
attempt to identify the countries which are of special importance to South
Africa in promoting its interests.
South
Africa’s current foreign policy has been described as “care and maintenance” of
what was created during the Mbeki presidency. The White Paper does little to
disabuse that characterisation.
Other
analysts were equally unmoved by the White Paper, or thought it added anything of
new significance for future use.
For example, Dr Mzukisi Qobo, senior lecturer in political
sciences at the University of Pretoria, described the exercise and its outcome
as “old wine in new bottles…it includes almost everything under the sun.”
Policy
analyst, Dr Greg Mills was crisper and harsher: he described our foreign policy
as “a bit of this and a bit of that.” In
the same article he also dismissed our diplomatic techniques as “largely
analogue for the digital world, and leadership anodyne, rather than dynamic.”
This rather painfully chimed with my lived experience as an ambassador.
2.3
National Development Plan 2030(Chapter Seven): “Positioning South Africa in the
World.”
Only
after returning from diplomatic service abroad in late 2012, did I discover
that one of the chapters in the National Development Plan 2030, published by
the National Planning Commission (NPC) of the South African Presidency, dealt
explicitly, and at length, with “Positioning South Africa in the World.” Admittedly,
it was only presented, in its final form, to the President and cabinet of South
Africa in August 2012, which might explain the absence of any of its cogent
recommendations in foreign policy planning during my tenure abroad. However,
its key points deal far more persuasively with the need for South Africa to
shape its policy by recognising –
The
interplay between diplomatic, political, security, environmental, economic and
regional co-operative dynamics that define early 21st century
international relationships. In particular, our foreign policy should remain
cognisant of global shifts in soft and smart and mental power form West to
East; the stratification of regional groupings in the world; the proliferation
of threats to human and state power; to internal and external sovereignty; and
to natural resources.
Its
clarion call for South Africa to develop “a clear strategy” based on the
country’s global, continental and regional situation is, in its decorous
language, doubtless indicating the key omission to which I have already
referred. It further elaborates on other recommendations, from creating a
cost-efficient and streamlined department to a frank acknowledgement of South
Africa’s relative decline and influence as “a significant presence in world
affairs” since the heady days of 1994. Crucially, it indicates that
international relations needs to be grounded “in the realities of the
international competition for resources that are scarce…and diminishing…and
unpredictable.”
However,
its impressive schema of South Africa’s place in the world does not,
interestingly, address the other contradiction of foreign policy execution, i.e
the centrality or otherwise of human rights to inform our approach to key
issues. This omission will be explored below (2.4.2).
It
remains to be seen whether the thinking and strategizing in this document
begins to inform and influence foreign policy-making for South Africa going
forward.
2.4.
“Theory Clashes with Practise”: Two Examples-
2.4.1:
The limitations of the theoretical underpinnings of foreign policy planning
when implemented abroad-
I
discovered, in practise, that little of
the departmental planning and the theoretical underpinnings of our foreign
policy were of much assistance on-the-ground in implementing our national
interests in South America. Indeed, I quickly reached the conclusion that for
our foreign missions, in Buenos Aires at least, we would have to create first,
our own selling points for South Africa in the dynamic and challenging markets
of South America and then decide how to promote these objectives. I also took
the view that a foreign mission abroad had to achieve a certain and measurable
level of cost -effectiveness in order to justify its significant overheads. It
is noteworthy that the total Foreign Affairs budget is currently approximately
R5bn, most of which is expended on our foreign missions abroad.
So where does
that essentially 18th century construction, the foreign embassy, fit into the
picture? How, with governments and people across the world battered by ‘the great
recession’ and states confronted by widening deficits and shrinking budgets, do
we justify the expenses, even perhaps the anachronism, of a diplomatic mission?
South Africa, a middle-ranking power, boasts of no fewer
than 124 legations in 107 countries abroad, each of them expensive to maintain
with an annual running cost, per mission on average in the R10-R15m range. Each
South African embassy abroad is charged with implementing our hugely ambitious
and expansive goal of “creating a better South Africa and contributing to a
better and safer Africa in a better world.” As I prepared to return home in
late 2012 at the end of my mission as a
self-described “accidental ambassador”, I outlined some of
the objectives I attempted to implement in my three years as a
South African Head of Mission: I concluded that:
1. Pre-eminently,
an embassy should be a profit not a cost centre: Around 95% of our operating
budget is ring-fenced by fixed costs, from salaries and rentals to
administrative charges. Without the generous sponsorships we managed to secure
for everything from business and investment seminars to art and movie
exhibitions, little would have been seen or heard of South Africa in this
corner of the world. But it is not just about vigorous fundraising and
projecting your country through public diplomacy, important as those
instruments are in the embassy toolkit. More than that, if an embassy, and its
ambassador, is not watching the numbers, from trade statistics to tourism
arrivals to FDI-flows and, crucially, making them grow then he or she might
indeed fit the acid description penned by another “accidental ambassador’’.
John Kenneth Galbraith (the famed economist and US envoy to India in the
1960’s) said that many ambassadors were “a spectacular example of what
economists call disguised unemployment. “An embassy needs to be much more than
a glorified combination of post office (for the relaying of messages) and a
travel agency (for visiting politicians).
2. An Embassy should at all times be the first port of call, and the last line of
defence, for its distressed citizens abroad and, crucially, its resident
investors and trading companies. Larger multinational corporations have less
need of embassy assistance (although with rising protectionism in Argentina,
for example, we often successfully managed interventions on their behalf). But
smaller and medium size enterprises back home certainly do.
As
regards, South Africa’s “selling points’’ or its unique value proposition in
the hyper-competitive and globalised world, my embassy colleagues and I found
it necessary not to simply package South Africa as “part of the rest” but to
distil the essence of , what the marketing experts call, our ‘differentiating
edge’.
I would (and indeed in my ambassadorship, did)
describe these under the following heads which could, with the necessary
substitution, doubtless be applied by South African diplomats and trade
officials elsewhere in the world:
- South Africa has unique selling points which cannot be easily replicated elsewhere : our mineral pre-eminence especially in platinum group products; our unique tourism diversity, especially the combination of the majestic beauty and sophistication of Cape Town and the rugged allure of our game reserves ; our geo-strategic location midpoint between South America and Asia –both home to the most dynamic markets in the emerging world, underlined by the fact that some 70% of SAA inward bound passengers from Brazil and Argentina are en route to an Asian destination; the extraordinary example of our constitutional settlement and the power of our negotiated settlement and the icons who created it as a mighty add-on of cultural and political significance.
You
will readily see from this list that certain current dangers and lurking future
threats can upend or destroy some, perhaps not all, the items on our national
menu of universal uniqueness.
- The second list is not unique to South Africa, but our continued holding of these assets makes us a competitive ‘’sell’’ in a highly competitive world and especially attractive in places, such as my recent host countries where, critically, some of these key elements are either missing or under threat: these include South Africa’s market access to Europe, Middle East and the United States, augmented by bilateral and unilateral (such as AGOA) trade agreements and investment protection treaties; Rule of Law certainty and constitutional protections of property and investment .
You
will also see that every element on is list is currently either under review or
even in some danger. It is perhaps ironic, that Minister Rob Davies with whom I
happily and energetically co-operated in selling South Africa in South America
and whose department has some seriously outstanding trade officers in our
embassies abroad, is discarding the bilateral investment treaties with some of
our European partners, the existence and continuance of which add such value
to our investment toolkit!
Another self-imposed ‘own goal’ in terms of attracting FDI to this country is
the recently mooted ban on foreign land ownership.
This
menu of offerings underpins an essential point: whatever our other interests,
and perhaps pretensions, in the wider world, in essence a country’s foreign
policy is the external projection of its domestic policies, attributes and
aspirations.
2.4.2.” Theory Clashes
with Practise” (2)
The
Wrong Side of Human Rights: The Arab Spring Exposes the Contradiction between
policy and Realpolitik.
The
expectation, so often disappointing in result, that South Africa would give
voice and effect to the practise of ethical diplomacy and providing an antidote
to the diplomatic school of realism so prevalent in the world, was not simply
the consequence of Nelson Mandela having bequeathed a hostage to fortune in his
famous Foreign Policy article back in 1993. The anticipation was
informed by the very nature of the struggle, and the forces it opposed, of the
governing ANC when it engaged in the battle against apartheid. This is well
described by Professor Peter Vale:
Apartheid’s
single greatest legacy could be that the world will rally people to struggle
against the injustice and poverty brought about by the inhumanity that people
do to one another.
And
who better, many in the world asked reasonably of us, than the forces which
helped remove the scourge of racial discrimination from the South African legal
and democratic order?
I
did not confine my concerns about our various lapses and inconsistencies on the
international stage to a joint embassy response to a white paper, as mentioned
above. On two occasions, I wrote
directly to the Minister and the Director General to express serious and
personal concern at acts and omissions that I thought seriously diminished our
moral capital in the world, as I will recount shortly.
And,
as we used to say during my time in legal practice, ‘’hard cases make bad law”. Nothing perhaps exposed the dashed
expectations and glaring contradictions and the somersaults of our foreign
policy than the ”Arab Spring”, which started to burn in December 2010, and soon
spread across much of North Africa and the Middle East; long-repressed citizens
under the heel of various fiefdoms and tyrannies began to demand and
demonstrate for basic democratic and economic rights, just as their compatriots
in South Africa had done some two or even three decades before.
Two such cases, Libya and Syria, tested the
limits of South Africa’s ‘new approach’ (which at first blush appeared under
President Zuma to be more robust in advancing a human rights agenda
internationally, than had been the case under previous administrations).
For
example,to my intense and pleasant surprise, one night in early March 2011, I
was watching the CNN live feed from the UN Security Council debate on the
situation in Libya and witnessed South Africa cast an historic vote in favour
of Resolution 1973 (uncharacteristically parting company with Russia and China
on the Council, who abstained) which called for “all necessary measures to be
taken to protect Libyan civilians under threat (from dictator Muammar Qaddafi)
including the imposition of a so-called ‘no fly zone’. “At last”, I mentioned
to some colleagues, “we are on the right side!”
Subsequent
developments on this front severely tempered my initial enthusiasm. South
Africa rapidly backtracked on this vote, often performing such contortions of
logic or illogicality that our reversals of position undermined our initial
posture. Zuma soon enough denounced the air strikes which NATO commenced
against the Qaddafi forces, which was entirely on all fours with the ‘no fly’
provision (which essentially meant that Libyan ground and air forces could not
operate in the area of exclusion). South Africa had entered the big league of
‘having your cake and eating it’. Days after the historic UN vote, Zuma
denounced the ‘killing of civilians’ and ‘the foreign occupation of Libya’ to a
local crowd at home. This led The Economist to question whether Zuma was
naïve enough to believe that the ‘’all necessary measures’’ he was in favour of
to protect Libyan civilians could be ‘’done without recourse to force.” Appropriately,
this critique on our foreign policy was headlined “All Over the Place” –a good
a short -hand description of our zigzagging pronouncements.
Of
course behind these lurches was a severe dose of what George Orwell famously
called ‘double think’- holding two contrasting views in your head and firmly
and simultaneously believing in both of them. Many political leaders suffer
from this affliction, but SA’s foreign entanglements seemed to represent this
ailment in extreme form. There was, at least in the case of Libya, a backstory.
South Africa’s desire, stronger under Zuma than under his predecessor, to ‘be
on the right side of history’ and to – at least on occasion – stand on the side
of the oppressed collided with the debts his movement owed to Qaddafi, both of
the literal and political sorts. Qaddafi had been a big bankroller of the ANC
(this nugget I was told first hand by Nelson Mandela back in 1994); in return
Mandela showered the Libyan dictator with state honours in 1997 and it was
widely rumoured that the Libyan dictator had then funded Zuma‘s wilderness
years after his ousting by Mbeki as deputy president in June 2005. Doubtless,
this constituted an explanation for our subsequent gyrations over Libya: a
ridiculous call for a ‘negotiated settlement’ between the imperilled Qaddafi
and the rebels who were closing in on him and, then, when it was clear that the
rebels were effectively in power in Libya a refusal for quite some time to
recognise – in contrast to most Arab and Western states – Libya’s National
Transitional Council as the government of Libya.
In
late August 2011, my colleagues in the Africa group of ambassadors in Buenos
Aires (which included North African Arab representatives) expressed to me
considerable surprise at South Africa’s stance over Libya. I muttered some
banal explanation, but was vehemently embarrassed by our posture. On return to
office that day, I wrote a note to DIRCO Director General, Ambassador Jerry
Matjila. In my missive of 31 August I advised -
“There
is a perception that we have a policy of either support for Qaddafi or have
placed such a premium on avoiding regime change that other foreign policy
commitments (support for human rights and the democratic aspirations of
subjugated people) are subordinated to this end. Whatever the merits or
demerits of the NATO campaign against his regime, it seems to me infinitely
less bad than the suffering he has inflicted on his own people and the apparent
lack of support and legitimacy which his 42 year old rule has enjoyed.”
There was an almost immediate response from
the Director General to this note. He advised that one of the issues
confronting all ambassadors, ‘’from time to time”, was the need to advance
positions with which they personally disagreed. But this of course was not the
point at all: no Argentine authority had asked me for a brief on our Libyan
stance and since it was difficult to fathom any consistency in it, I would have
been stymied to advance one of any coherence. He simply evaded my central
contention.
The
slippery slide down the road to inconsistency gathered pace as the Arab Spring
lit the fires of resistance in Syria. I had been quite stunned when, during a
heads of mission gathering in Pretoria in mid-2011, ”our man in Damascus”, the
South African Ambassador to Syria - had taken to the floor to denounce the
abuse of social media by Syrian pro-democracy activists for presenting, in his
myopic view, the world with “a distorted view of the position on the ground”.
No doubt our emissary was a keen supporter of the besieged regime of President
Bashar al-Assad, who at that stage was energetically slaughtering his civilian
population as they rose up against his dictatorship and rule of fear. By late
2012, it was estimated that over 60, 000 Syrians had been killed, largely by
government forces.
While
a direct military option was not on the table, it was clear that most
democratic countries and the bulk of the Arab World and neighbouring Turkey
were of one mind to apply coercive diplomacy, from sanctions to asset-freezes and
even arming the rebels – to express revulsion against Assad’s savagery. South
Africa was not among them.
Instead,
DIRCO issued a mealy-mouthed statement of spectacularly misguided
even-handedness, as though there was a moral equivalence between a brutal
regime and its opponents. One paragraph from the department’s ‘expression of
concern about the situation in Syria’ was truly remarkable. The DIRCO statement
noted that “South Africa condemns all forms of violence, including the use of
force against unarmed civilians, as well as hostility against security
forces and sectarian violence. (My emphasis).
Elsewhere
in the Middle East, however, South Africa found one arena in which to proclaim
its solidarity with the rights of oppressed and marginalised people: in every
forum and statement, it energetically stood up for the beleaguered people of
Palestine. But since their adversary was (for the ANC) the easy target of
Israel, this selectivity simply drew attention to our silence on far worse
rights-violators in the same neighbourhood.
Unsurprisingly,
when the UN Security Council later voted to condemn the human rights abuses by
the government of Syria against its own civilians, South Africa abstained.
I
thought this appalling enough. But our straining every sinew to, at best, stay
neutral between oppressor and oppressed or, more balefully, to provide succour
to the Assads and Qaddafis of the world
impelled me to take advantage of the invitation of the Minister (Maite
Nkoana- Mashabane), offered at the outset of my mission, to express to her ‘any
concerns’. So, on 12 October 2011, I sent her a letter indicating that our
posture on Syria and our refusal to grant the XIV Dalai Lama a visa to visit
South Africa, “undermined our commitment to advancing a principled foreign
policy, based on human rights and democracy.”
My
politely worded rebuke received no response, but it did (I noticed from the ensuing
timeline) lead to the department enthusiastically endorsing my decision to
return a year early from my posting and even trying to advance the date. As
Britain’s great jurist, Lord Denning once noted, “The arm of coincidence is
long, but it does not stretch unto infinity.”
After
my return home, the SA Institute of International Affairs invited me in
November 2012 to address a meeting at the University of Witwatersrand, on my
view of foreign policy. I concluded my remarks by noting -
“I
think the point is plain: whatever else might be said for our foreign policy,
and there are in fact some significant accomplishments, the promise of Nelson
Mandela in 1993 that ‘human rights will be the light which guides our foreign
policy’ is not among them.” I had obviously become very diplomatic by then,
since this was something of an understatement.
2.6.
Learning and Listening –Home Thoughts Learnt Abroad: Lessons from “The South”.
One
of the less helpful ‘noises off’ which intruded on my mission’s attempts to ‘sell
South Africa’ as a safe haven for foreign investment, were the economically illiterate remarks of Julius
Malema, then president of the ruling party (ANC) youth league in favour of
wholesale nationalisation of mining assets and . He both scared foreign
investors and delighted the mass of unemployed youths. He was, via the ANC
disciplinary machine, later expelled from the party before my return. But for
all the hypocrisy and populism of Malema, he had given voice to a rising and
justifiable discontent among the many, some 50%, of the youth, who had never
enjoyed a formal job any had little prospect of obtaining one. For all the many
things which South Africa had got right in the past two decades, the failure of
both our system and leaders to address meaningfully this burning issue, remains
the greatest danger for the country going forward.
Perhaps
one of the most important, and underrated, aspects of a diplomatic presence
abroad is the ability to report back home to your diplomatic principals on key
policies and practices in your countries of accreditation which might,
usefully, be considered with the necessary adaption, at home.
South
America offered no end of lessons on how to address, or not, South Africa’s
central current failures-the negative trifecta of low growth, high unemployment
and widening inequality.
Copying Argentina, through raiding the public
purse to buy off discontented voters and fuel inflation and scare off investors
was one path; but it was, at the time of my departure from Buenos Aires,
leading to a cul-de-sac of ever more desperate short term measures which
crippled its future prospects. The other and smarter course was the tougher
road hewed by neighbouring Chile and Brazil and further away Colombia (which
was on the verge of overtaking Argentina as the second largest economy in South
America by October 2012). This required the creation of a virtuous cycle of
addressing unemployment through boosting and building the platform for
sustainable growth and incentivizing responsible behaviour in exchange for
subsidies (.e.g. in Brazil, child support grants were only obtainable in proof
of school attendance and vaccinations). And, of course, subjugating short-term
considerations for long term pay offs.
South
Africa gave voice to both options and the government itself, in another display
of ‘double think’, at home as it often
does abroad, seemed to embrace rather than resolve the contradiction. On the
one hand there was the ‘diagnostic overview’ of the National Planning Commission,
published in November 2011. It was authored by a powerful committee, appointed
by President Zuma to chart a national course into 2030.
On
its last page, appeared a paragraph which perfectly encapsulated the sort of
winning and inclusive state which South Africa, with the right admixture of
good and farsighted politics and bold leadership and an engaged citizenry,
could become. The commission stated –
Successful countries have what is
called a ‘future orientation’. Their policy bias is to take decisions that lead
to long-term benefits, as opposed to short-run solutions that could have
negative effects later on. Such countries generally prefer investment over consumption;
have high saving rates, sound fiscal policy, high levels of fixed investment, a
high degree of policy certainty and clear rules of engagement for the private
sector. A clear and predictable policy environment enables business to take a
long-term perspective on growth and development. Countries with a future
orientation generally spend more on education, and value it more in communities
and households.
On
the other hand, my last act of public diplomacy abroad was to deal with the
fallout from the massacre of striking miners had occurred at a platinum mine I
had never heard of near Rustenberg in the North West Province. Marikana was a
name which would soon enough, however, echo across the world as a synonym for
everything that was wrong and ugly in today’s South Africa. For on that bleak
winter’s day police shot and killed 34 miners engaged in an illegal wildcat
strike; more than a dozen others, including policemen also lost their lives at the
hands of violent strikers. It was the single most lethal use of force by state
security forces against civilians since the end of apartheid and even well
before that. Between the fine prospectus for a better South Africa, offered by
the national planning commission and the dismal events at the Lonmin mine at
Marikana, lies a gulf. Whether we cross it, in safety and in time, remains the
essential challenge for the future.
2.7.
Conclusion
The key aspect
for South Africa going forward is the need to renew our national purpose, not
looking back with nostalgic sentiment, but by approaching the future with
renewed determination. This is not simply a reflection from afar, or a ‘home
thought from abroad’ as it were, but a direct consequence of the fact that
South Africa’s status in the world has been achieved as a consequence of the
immense strength (a classic example of what Harvard professor Joseph Nye terms
‘soft power’) of the example which we provided to the world. This was during
the period of our political and constitutional transition from apartheid to
democracy in the early 1990’s. Our power of example, rather than the example of
our power back then, created a following wind of high expectation and
international goodwill, which we have seldom matched in the more prosaic and
difficult two decades since then.
Tony Leon served from 2009 until 2012 as South African
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Argentina, Uruguay and
Paraguay. Previously he led the Democratic Alliance in South Africa and was the
Leader of the Official Oppositions in Parliament. He is a qualified attorney
and lectured in law at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He was
awarded Fellowships to the institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University (2007), Cato Institute, Washington DC (2008),
and Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (2013). He has authored two
books, “Hope and Fear-Reflections of a Democrat (1998) and “On the
Contrary-Leading the Opposition in a Democratic South Africa (2008). His
forthcoming book, “The Accidental Ambassador-From Parliament to Patagonia” will
be published in April 2013.
