GEORGE PHILIPAS | SA must clean up its act in Africa. Its future depends on it

It has certainly been an active 18 months or so for President Cyril Ramaphosa and his foreign policy pivot to Africa. As chairperson of the AU last year and at the G20 summit in November, he championed decisive measures to counteract the effect of the pandemic on Africa as a whole, seeking debt relief, increased vaccine procurement and waivers on vaccine patents to encourage domestic African production. 

Last month SA deployed 1,500 troops making up the bulk of the multinational force under Sadc command to counter the growing threat of an Islamic insurgency in northern Mozambique.  

Increasing SA’s footprint in Africa has been central to Ramaphosa’s presidency. Underlying this energetic reorientation is the belief that the country’s prosperity is closely tied to that of the continent. Foreign policy aimed at lifting Africa’s fortunes as a whole will ultimately help SA’s own cause. 

At the heart of this economic diplomacy is the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement (AfCFTA). When fully functional it could witness the birth of the largest tariff-free single market in the world and probably the best long-term hope for SA to escape the low-growth and high-unemployment trap that it perennially finds itself in. 

We may see that tariff concessions are made for products where currently there is little trade and limited trade potential, and those that have potential to boost intra-Africa trade may well not be liberalised.

—  Trudi Hartzenberg, executive director at the Trade Law Centre

But a closer look and everything isn’t as clear cut as first seems. SA’s foreign policy strategy is more ambivalent and tainted by frequent failure on the continent, where many of its objectives bump into the harsh reality of financial restraints, poor implementation and the often harsh geopolitical realities.  These shortcomings could ultimately hamper AfCFTA that desperately requires Africa’s continental heavyweights — Nigeria, Egypt and SA — to step up if it has any real chance of success.

SA has certainly been at the forefront of pushing AfCFTA in a constructive manner. It successfully campaigned for the experienced and widely-respected South African technocrat, Wamkele Mene, to head the AfCFTA secretariat. 

“I think that is one good example of how SA threw its weight behind the agreement,”  Cyril Prinsloo, senior researcher at the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA), an independent public policy think-tank, points out. 

And SA was instrumental in making sure the headquarters were based in Accra, away from Addis Ababa and the seat of Africa’s political power. “The fact that the AfCFTA secretariat is physically away from Addis is not coincidental,” continues Prinsloo. “When you come to the economics and the trade agreement, you don’t want political interference.”

But for all the euphoria that has come with AfCFTA, there are some glaring problems that Africa faces if it is to succeed. Most of these centre on the continent’s lack of infrastructure, without which the industrialisation and inward investment will be hard to attract, and the non-tariff barriers such as customs bureaucracy and porous borders that affect the continent more than most.  

“If you can’t enforce rules of origin and entry points and there’s an influx of goods, that really negates a lot of the good of AfCFTA,” Prinsloo says.

While SA might have been constructive in pushing for a strong administrative backbone for AfCFTA, when it comes to negotiating the actual agreement it has been far less constructive in its approach. It is currently dragging its heels over tariff concessions in industries it deems crucial to its industrial strategy. Industries such as textiles have been decimated to the point of being detrimental to the country’s fortunes, while SA enjoys such a large comparative advantage in the automotive industry that it is doubtful if any other African country would be able to outcompete it. 

SA is certainly not alone in this stance, but if it is to act as a leader and drive the agreement it will need to lead by example, confident in its advantage at home and in its ability to exploit any opportunities opened up in return on the continent. If it doesn’t, then, as Trudi Hartzenberg, executive director at the Trade Law Centre (Tralac), a public benefit organisation developing African trade governance, explains, the consequences would defeat the entire purpose of AfCFTA. 

“As a result we may see that tariff concessions are made for products where currently there is little trade and limited trade potential, and those that have potential to boost intra-Africa trade may well not be liberalised.” 

It is not just in the negotiations that SA exposes another side to its economic diplomacy. It also suffers from a lack of coordination and effective implementation of its business policy on the continent. 

“I think business chambers, from domestic business chambers to even the diplomatic business chambers that are represented through their various missions here in SA, find it difficult to understand what SA’s communication strategy is. And in many ways, I think that becomes a critical issue for how SA talks to the continent,” says Sanusha Naidu, senior research associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD), an independent SA foreign policy think-tank.

Consecutive budget cuts to both the department of international relations and cooperation (Dirco) and the SANDF haven’t helped either. But budgets can also be better managed. Naidu calls for more targeted and skilled deployments, especially to African multilateral bodies. 

“I think you can do well by sending South Africans who are career foreign policy specialists into these institutions,” she says. “A group of people who are willing to communicate back to Pretoria, to Dirco, or even to the presidency about the ebbs and flows around issues there and what’s gathering traction. I think it will help SA in formulating strategy because I think not being at that centre at times does play a sort of disabling and disempowering role for SA.” 

Shortcomings in its diplomatic structure were cruelly exposed last month when SA was caught off guard by the accession of Israel to observer status in the AU, something that it has vehemently opposed partly because of the ongoing conflict in Gaza, but also because of the Israel’s historic links to the apartheid regime.

Tying foreign policy to the past in general has also had some confusing and counterproductive outcomes – refusing to speak out even when other African countries fall short of the values of good governance, for example. 

“I think the challenge for SA is that it remains caught by its apartheid identity to a large extent.” Naidu says. “SA gets very nervous about its role at times. So it talks about peace, stability and development as key to its Africa policy. But what happens is, when it really has to push on that peace, stability and development, it gets entangled more with what the reaction is going be to taking any sort of intervention.”

In the post-pandemic world, where increased unrest on the continent is a likely outcome, intervention may be crucial to Africa’s stability. Recent events in Afghanistan have made it abundantly clear the US is retreating from its traditional role of the world’s policeman. It will be increasingly up to regional powers to push for stability in their own backyards. While the recent deployment in Mozambique is a start, it is likely the SANDF will be called upon again and will have to step up through stronger security cooperation with other countries on the continent. But with its budget cut to the bone and focus turned inward after the recent unrest, it is hard to see how it will cope.

In the past, it was easy to cut Dirco and SANDF budgets without much fuss, but increasingly, having an effective footprint on the continent is directly tied to SA’s economic prosperity, and this is a fact that it can no longer afford to ignore.

George Philips is a Cape Town-based feature writer whose focus is on economic and African issues in general.