JJ TABANE | Friends like these: there’s little that redeems South Africa’s foreign policy

South Africa relied on a key pillar of international solidarity for its liberation. This means a great deal of the pressure on the apartheid regime came from countries around the world isolating the regime. Among other things, the UN’s declaration that apartheid was a crime against humanity accelerated the isolation of the regime. So how come South Africa seems to have abandoned solidarity in its latter-day foreign policy?

One big cog in the wheel of the international solidarity was a principled stance that many countries took to isolate South Africa economically, including sanctions and cultural boycotts. The combination of these factors included various neighbours’ welcome to exiled South Africans at a huge risk to their own citizens given the openly hostile and militarised apartheid SA.

It is this elaborate history that makes SA’s so-called quiet diplomacy all the more politically intransigent when it comes to the plight of crumbling democracies in Southern Africa. Quite frankly South Africa has lost moral standing in fighting for citizens in a similar predicament we found ourselves during apartheid. What’s worse, no irony seems to befall the government where this is concerned.

The recent passing of the so-called Patriotic Act is a brazen attempt to silence the opposition ahead of the elections. South Africa is once again quiet.

Take Eswatini for example. With more than just persuasion but real moral pressure, South Africa could influence democratic change against the despotic King Mswati if it so desired. Instead, a few years ago South Africa loaned Mswati R2.5bn, which he used to buy a private jet instead of attending to the horrendous socioeconomic crisis engulfing that country. South Africa by so doing, turned a blind eye to the plight of the people of Eswatini, whose rights are trampled upon by the absence of any democratic culture in that country. On our doorstep human rights activists are murdered and political activity suppressed — a script that was obtained here just some 30 years ago and had us using Eswatini as refuge. Once again no irony of that situation seems to bother us.

The ANC’s bosom buddy across the Limpopo River, Zanu-PF, is a big beneficiary of South Africa’s quiet diplomacy since the days of Mugabe. Zanu-PF is just about to steal another election by making the pre-election environment toxic through oppressive legislation and an iron fist against the opposition. The recent passing of the so-called Patriotic Act is a brazen attempt to silence the opposition ahead of the elections. South Africa is once again quiet. We will be told that engagements are happening “behind the scenes”. The results of such engagement have proved ineffective and only confirm acquiescence with a poor human rights culture that Zimbabwe has come to be known for. The unfortunate result of this environment is that millions of Zimbabweans have fled to settle in South Africa, burdening social services and contributing to strife.

Most recently Uganda has threatened atrocious sentences against citizens merely for their sexual orientation. This is against everything our model constitution stands for. Yet once again the statements from the SA government are polite and geared at diplomacy rather than activism or advocacy for change to cause human rights culture to be respected.

In the same light as the embarrassing refusal of a visa against the Dalai Lama a few years ago to appease China, it’s no wonder South Africa was found wanting in the Russia-Ukraine war. It is not hard to conclude that South Africa has lost its high moral standing in the continent and the world, to a point where we even fail to return the favour that the international community did us in our darkest days. If the international community behaved as we do today, we would still be in the trenches. The seriousness of apartheid required countries to put aside diplomacy and call out the regime for wrongdoing. One must ask why South Africa cannot do the same for a so-called better world and better Africa. Under our watch, the same Israel we condemn every day for atrocities against Palestine has an observer status in the African Union, and Morocco, which has occupied Sahara, has regained its seat at the AU without protest from South Africa.

There seems to be no redeeming feature of our foreign policy. As if this is not enough, after making a song and dance about our domestication of the Rome Statute under Mandela, we are now considering pulling out of this instrument as it forces us to implement unpalatable resolve against our friends. The usual intransigent refrain is the unfairness of the ICC and the fact that we would rather default to the African court of justice. But we all know that this body is defunct, and no-one even the AU itself has bothered to make it functional.

If we are to be taken seriously we need to go back to the moral foreign policy framework for which South Africa was known under Mandela and not find an excuse for those of our friends internationally who are doing wrong things against their own citizens. That is real international solidarity that we after all benefited from to achieve our latter-day liberation.

* Dr JJ Tabane is editor of Leadership magazine and Anchor of Power to Truth on eNCA