[DEBATE] : Mbeki's abysmal foreign policy failures Greg Mills

[Riaz K Tayob]

Snip:

[Mills pining for  free trade and Washington alignment with 
characteristic simplistic arguments.]

This is a continental malaise. Africa has the biggest voting bloc in the 
UN, WTO and other such bodies. But what does South Africa and the 
continent 'trade' its votes for? Help to Cuba and the Palestinians, 
blocking UN managerial reform, obstructing the interests of Western 
powers, and manoeuvring around tougher action on Burma and Iran.

None of this does one bit for Africa or Africans, outside of the New 
York diplomats who revel in such posturing or those leaders overwrought 
by their own anti-colonial complexes. Africa is often the subject of 
these meetings, but its leaders generally miss the point.

As the collapse of the global trade talks shows, the WTO is perhaps the 
worst example. Led by Pretoria, 40 African votes were locked together 
with China, India and Brazil, with the aim of resisting European and 
American demands for the South American and South Asian giants to open 
their markets.

.....[Ah- so we have no need to stop reduction of our tariffs - where 
does this guy get his information? South Africa played a role in the 
NAMA 11 because they were ignored in the negotiations  and want to stick 
to the mandate of Doha - that is to have a comparable level of ambition 
between what happens in Agriculture and what happens in goods trade.]

Fine for them, but those same countries have as high or higher tariffs 
on African goods as the European Union (EU) does, and much higher than 
the United States (US). If African votes in support of their positions 
had been exchanged for commitment from those countries to provide duty- 
and quota-free status to Africa (a small price for them to pay given the 
limited share Africa would gain in their markets), this position would 
make sense.

...[ "a small price to pay" - is this guy serious ??? - even mainstream 
economists are not so glib about the impact of tariff liberalisation in 
Africa. Does he live in South Africa - has he been to Mooi River, 
Doornfontein, Salt River, where our textile factories/mills were? COSATU 
did a fantastic job at recent WTO meeting keeping DTI on track...]

Instead Africa has sold its votes for some form of South-South 
solidarity without any return serving its own interests. India, China 
and Brazil must have laughed all the way to Geneva for every Doha session.

[Funny how this alleged free trader does not once mention the battle to 
limit subsidies in the North - this selective free trade puritanism is 
ridiculous...]


Part of the Moneyweb network Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Mbeki's abysmal foreign policy failures Greg Mills
13 October 2008

Greg Mills writes that it is time to put South Africa's interests first 
again

A visionary South African foreign policy would take advantage of the 
enormous political capital of its global statesman primus inter pares, 
Nelson Mandela, along with the strengths of South Africa's political and 
racial diversity, the lessons of its own negotiation and transformation 
process, good and bad, and sophistication and muscle of South Africa's 
economy, 40% of sub-Saharan Africa's total. Its domestic political and 
economic success would offer a platform and resource for all of Africa, 
allowing brave and bold foreign-policy thinking that is fresh and 
independent, offering a uniquely African democratic development model.

Yet today what could have been - and might still be - has to be 
contextualised within the damage done by the current regime to South 
Africa's foreign-policy credibility and impact.

President Thabo Mbeki is supposed to be the great strategist, the 
Machiavelli of negotiations, the man who puffs his pipe giving little 
away, all the time sizing up his opposition while astutely thinking of 
the long game and envisaging dimensions and directions others only 
discern with hindsight.

This image is not been supported, however, by his Polokwane re-election 
miscalculation and in the one area he is supposedly both especially 
knowledgeable and passionate about: foreign policy.

The image and direction of South Africa's foreign policy is today 
bewilderingly far removed from Nelson Mandela's 1993 hope that human 
rights would be the light that guided its foreign policy, a beacon of 
hope for the world and for African development. Indeed, nothing would 
seem to symbolise President Mbeki's failures more than the disappearance 
of the "African renaissance" from discourse.

In fact, it is unclear what today motivates South Africa's leaders to 
take the positions they currently do in international affairs. They 
certainly do not appear to be stirred by a clear understanding of South 
Africa's national interest. Few calculations appear to be actively made 
to balance interests between ideological priorities and the country's 
needs of trade, investment and international influence.

Take Pretoria's role in the United Nations (UN) and voting tactics in 
the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where short-term tactical 
politicisation routinely overshadows strategic considerations.

This is a continental malaise. Africa has the biggest voting bloc in the 
UN, WTO and other such bodies. But what does South Africa and the 
continent 'trade' its votes for? Help to Cuba and the Palestinians, 
blocking UN managerial reform, obstructing the interests of Western 
powers, and manoeuvring around tougher action on Burma and Iran. None of 
this does one bit for Africa or Africans, outside of the New York 
diplomats who revel in such posturing or those leaders overwrought by 
their own anti-colonial complexes. Africa is often the subject of these 
meetings, but its leaders generally miss the point.

As the collapse of the global trade talks shows, the WTO is perhaps the 
worst example. Led by Pretoria, 40 African votes were locked together 
with China, India and Brazil, with the aim of resisting European and 
American demands for the South American and South Asian giants to open 
their markets. Fine for them, but those same countries have as high or 
higher tariffs on African goods as the European Union (EU) does, and 
much higher than the United States (US). If African votes in support of 
their positions had been exchanged for commitment from those countries 
to provide duty- and quota-free status to Africa (a small price for them 
to pay given the limited share Africa would gain in their markets), this 
position would make sense. Instead Africa has sold its votes for some 
form of South-South solidarity without any return serving its own 
interests. India, China and Brazil must have laughed all the way to 
Geneva for every Doha session.

Imagine if the Africans - led by South Africa - were to use their votes 
as strategically as the Eastern Europeans did brilliantly in their 
campaign for membership of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 
and the EU? For example, by helping on more balanced Middle East 
resolutions in the General Assembly, Africans could gain more concrete 
US support for peacekeeping operations in Darfur and Somalia, and by 
helping trim the UN budget waste they could receive more assistance for 
their own specific development needs.

Take another topical example: Zimbabwe. Mr Mbeki has rhetorically 
attempted to restore normality to Zimbabwe's politics by encouraging Mr 
Mugabe down the path of electoral politics. There is nothing inherently 
wrong with that, even though it has amounted to too little too late in 
the day of hyper-inflation, ratcheting state violence by Harare, and a 
disintegrating social order.

Following the failure of the electoral route and Pretoria's role in 
heading off a tightened UN sanctions regime against Harare, Mbeki has 
tried to fulfil his Southern African Development Community (SADC) 
mandate and negotiate an end to the worsening crisis through creating a 
unity government. In the face of the opposition Movement for Democratic 
Change's (MDC's) victory in the 29 March 2008 election, Mr Mbeki has 
thus appeared to be more interested in the welfare and dignity of 
Zimbabwe's leader and his ZANU-PF party cohort than in the country's 
people. No wonder, then, that Zimbabweans, among others, are angered by 
the South African president's role:

"'If Mbeki thinks he can arm-twist Zimbabweans into accepting his own 
formula for peace, he has got another think coming. We are Zimbabweans, 
Mr. Mbeki. This is not a Limpopo Province. When we say we want democracy 
in Zimbabwe, we do not stop with half measures."

Or, as the South African Sunday Times observed:

"Forcing Tsvangirai to accept Mugabe as the executive president of a 
government of national unity might be a first step towards peace for 
millions of people, but it would signal to the world that the uniquely 
African democracy we profess to seek is no democracy at all."

Even if Mbeki's peace solution, signed on 15 September 2008, holds, his 
role can only be judged an overall failure, unless, of course, the aim 
was only to keep the MDC and Mr Tsvangirai from rightfully taking power. 
Pretoria's pathological unwillingness to act over the past decade 
against Mugabe - if only to say what was happening there was wrong - has 
allowed the crisis to develop to today's point of meltdown. This has 
produced a disastrous economic legacy which experience elsewhere in 
Africa teaches will take at least as long as the period of decline to undo.

Mbeki's failings on Zimbabwe have partly also been about poor tactics: 
given that Pretoria has spurned the contemplation of tougher measures 
(and indeed actively sought to head them off in the UN), it left itself 
only with a bag of carrots and imploring rhetoric. Hence the minimal 
leverage over Mr Mugabe in convincing the octogenarian not to hang on to 
executive power at Zimbabweans' expense. And from steadfastly 
maintaining the need for Zimbabweans to sort the crisis out themselves 
and thus to do nothing, Mr Mbeki said in August 2008 he was willing to 
stay in Zimbabwe for six months to ensure a deal was struck (see here). 
Mbeki's long-held opinion that quiet diplomacy was the only way to 
retain influence over Harare has proven as false as it was ideologically 
self-serving. After all, what influence, and to what end?

The reasons for this partly lie in Mbeki's misunderstanding of Mugabe, a 
man who has continuously played Pretoria's Machiavelli like a fiddle. 
ZANU-PF has been shown, historically and today, to have few moral 
scruples when it comes to getting into or staying in power. When real 
political change comes - as it inevitably will since the (freefall) 
Zimbabwe economy demands it - it will have had little to do with Mbeki's 
role.

Such foreign-policy directions likely also relate to an ideological 
unease with the professed libertarian precepts of South Africa's 
economy, which has resonance elsewhere across the continent. While the 
debate on African political systems is largely settled (with exceptions) 
in favour of liberal democracy, the discourse on economics is less 
certain, hence the absence of widespread criticism by African leaders of 
Mr Mugabe's economic policies per se, even if there is concern for their 
meltdown effects. Where not openly visible, the desire to indigenise 
African commerce lies just beneath the surface, and not only in Zimbabwe.

South Africa's foreign-policy choices are also partly linked to an at 
times barely disguised sentiment of anti-imperialism, applying to the 
West (and not to Russia's or China's imperialistic ambitions) and its 
apparent arch-progenitor, the United States. This view is allowable, of 
course, providing it does not lead to bad choices, such as Pretoria's 
failure to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the United States, or 
to forego the aforementioned UN targeted-sanctions option against 
Harare. The barely disguised glee - schadenfreude - that permeates 
Pretoria's corridors and the mindset of its mandarins, and lies behind 
analysis of the US economy or its role in Iraq and Afghanistan, for 
example, overlooks the centrality of the US to the global economy - 
around one-quarter of the world's gross domestic product at last count. 
The self-righteous antipathy towards US foreign policy seems to forget 
that Washington is most often the first port of call for those in peril 
- and that the current Bush administration has been the most generous 
ever to African aid and other development endeavours. Mr Mugabe has 
crudely if skillfully played to this sentiment, one which resonates 
across Africa (if decreasingly in Zimbabwe itself), by accusing Mr 
Tsvangirai's MDC of being the candidate of resurgent Western imperial 
interests.

And the puzzle of Mbeki's foreign policy is partly down to the related 
liberation narrative of the African National Congress (ANC).

 From his Zimbabwe actions, it would appear that Mr Mbeki's ANC wants 
South Africa to be seen both as a liberator and as the liberated: a 
country attempting to reinforce the party's credentials from its 
anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggle. The paradox is, of course, 
that protecting the party's self-image and perpetuating liberation 
narratives too often trumps doing the right thing: witness Pretoria's 
support for dictatorships over democracy. It has exposed the 
government's weakness and sensitivities on questions of race in its 
reactions to the involvement of other powers in even commenting on 
Zimbabwe. It also perpetuates the Sinatra mythology of South Africa's 
own negotiations: that South Africans, led by the ANC, did it "their 
way" with little outside interference or involvement, conveniently 
overlooking the role of sanctions or the existence of a rational 
domestic negotiating partner. Viewed through this prism, the MDC and 
ZANU-PF were similarly to sort out their own differences by themselves - 
the view perpetuated until Mr Mbeki came under pressure from more 
resolute SADC members this year. Combined with Zimbabwe's economic 
collapse to a Weimar-style situation of hyper-inflation measured in 
hundreds of million of percent annually, this, not Mr Mbeki, acted as 
leverage on Mr Mugabe. He might have been able to regularly rig his 
country's elections, but the octogenarian could not rig his economy.

There has been, until now, little international cost to all of this. For 
the moment, the world is preoccupied with making peace in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, dealing with issues of nuclearisation and with faltering 
economies, and other erupting crises such as the Russian-Georgian 
conflict. So Pretoria gets, for the most part, a free pass, even though 
its hand-holding with Harare, Teheran, Rangoon and others at the very 
least dims the sparkle of its once-considerable foreign reputation. In 
the immediate term, all of this makes ridiculous Pretoria's apparently 
earnest attempts over the past decade to negotiate an end to the 
Israeli-Palestinian impasse.

There will be other prices to pay for cosying up to autocrats. These 
will be paid in the image South Africa has as a reliable international 
partner, and in the poisoning and enfeeblement of SADC and, to some 
extent, the African Union. It will also have costs in terms of the 
strength of the South African nation, given that today a large body of 
citizens, from the Congress of South African Trade Unions to important 
sections of the business community, cannot identify - and do not benefit 
materially from - Pretoria's foreign line.

For ultimately the strength and influence of any foreign policy derives 
fundamentally from a country's success as a society at home, from 
determining what sort of society it wants to be, and acting that way. 
Economic power is one aspect; for South Africa, the deeper one relates 
to its ability not only to want to appear an inclusive, non-racial 
democracy, but to act that way. Such values, if they are to have any 
meaning and South Africa any persuasive "soft" power, have to be upheld 
consistently and without fear or favour, at home and abroad.

Pretoria's support for rogues is therefore unlikely to assist its own 
efforts to provide security and development for all South Africans, the 
first aim of any responsible government. Nor is it likely to assist its 
aspirations to strengthen global governance through the UN; indeed, it 
may have the opposite effect by alienating the big spenders. And it is 
unlikely to assist Pretoria in gaining a place at the main table, such 
as a permanent UN Security Council seat.

The only benefit Pretoria's foreign-policy behaviour can give currently 
is comfort in the minds of its ideologues by preserving for a little 
longer the mythology of sections of the party, its personalities, its 
politics and its place in history. As long as it remains locked into 
this position, it will be difficult to change the attitude that it is 
not worth talking seriously to South Africa. It is in South Africa's 
national, moral and material interest to hasten this era's closure, not 
to sustain it, and to develop and deploy the tools, skills, systems and 
institutions capable of pursuing a foreign policy worthy of the 
country's name, status and assets.

Theodore Roosevelt observed to the Harvard Union in 1907 that "[i]n 
popular government results worth having can be achieved only by men who 
combine worthy ideals with practical good sense". Results are at the 
outset all about leadership. Given the wrong, narcissistic sort, and the 
related stocking of key foreign-policy institutions, as with the 
departments of both Foreign Affairs and Trade and Industry, with 
below-par hacks apparently capable of little apart from toeing the 
presidency's line, Pretoria will make little progress in its ambitions 
to improve the lot of South Africans through its foreign-policy actions. 
It cannot do so, also, if there is an environment where criticism is 
perceived as dissent, and where the hallmark of government, and utility 
of civil society and the media, resides for the presidency in their 
unswerving and uncritical loyalty.

But for a new ANC administration in Pretoria, the reverse also holds 
true. If it can do this, Mr Mbeki's departure from office could light up 
South Africa's foreign policy stage.

Dr Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation This 
article was originally published in the Helen Suzman Foundation's 
journal, Focus, Issue 51 3rd Quarter, September 2008 (see 
http://www.hsf.org.za/)

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=106338&sn=Detail