By R.W. JOHNSON
Some years ago a much-practised obituarist for one of the London papers wrote a fine essay about how to decode obituaries. “His passion for debate often left him a solitary figure” meant: “He was impossibly argumentative and had no friends.” “As even his wife agreed, he could be a difficult man meant: “his marriage was unhappy.” And my favourite, “His later years were clouded by ill health” meant: “He had a heavy drinking problem.”
I was reminded of this by reading Thabo Mbeki’s address – the inaugural Aziz Pahad lecture – at DIRCO (South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation). I must confess that I always found it difficult to take Aziz Pahad seriously. I knew several people who thought him mad and, notoriously, his later years were, ahem, clouded by ill-health.
True, it was Aziz’s long tenure as deputy foreign minister that kicked off the long-lasting (and still current) Muslim dominance of our foreign ministry, though Aziz was hardly a conventional Muslim. The other somewhat comical aspect of the occasion was the praise that Mbeki heaped on Aziz as an accomplished foreign policy expert. For, of course, Aziz held the post he did precisely in order to ensure that Mbeki’s foreign policies were carried out, so in effect Mbeki was praising himself.
As one looks back at that era, it seems to have mainly been one of wasted opportunities. True, South Africa at least managed not to get into a fight with the USA, but Mbeki’s very expensive attempt to resurrect the Non-Aligned Movement essentially went nowhere. The equally ambitious attempt to launch NEPAD also went nowhere, while the first World Conference Against Racism collapsed into an anti-semitic shambles.
Mbeki’s initiative to change the OAU into the African Union didn’t really achieve anything: all the old faults of the OAU have remained with the AU. Moreover, at the time Mbeki was clearly aiming at South African leadership of the whole continent. That too hasn’t fared well.
But the greatest failure was over Zimbabwe. When Mugabe lost his constitutional referendum in 2000, Zimbabwe was ripe for a democratic transition after 20 years of authoritarian rule by Mugabe. All the polls I conducted in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2008 uniformly showed a large majority for the MDC, but that party was never allowed to win.
To prevent that, Mugabe used torture, murder, intimidation and straightforward rigging, but the only reason that he was able to get away with it was Mbeki’s decision to support him to the hilt. This decision was based on the usual Mbeki paranoia – that the forces of imperialism were planning to overthrow first Mugabe and then all the ruling southern African liberation movements.
This was a huge act of self-harm. Had Mbeki allowed democracy to have its way, Zimbabwe could have been re-born. As it was, the democratic impulse was brutally stifled and Zimbabwe today is a failed state run by gangsters. South Africa lost one of its most important trading partners and has had to cope with the influx of millions of desperate Zimbabweans.
Mbeki’s desperate attempts to defend Mugabe earned him the contempt of Tony Blair, and doomed NEPAD. It was lose-lose. Which makes one wonder about the Aziz Pahad Lectures. True, Aziz loyally played his part in all these failures and exhausted initiatives but there really isn’t much to celebrate, let alone commemorate.
Mbeki quotes a series of American assessments that there is an increasing threat of Islamic terrorism in Africa. He then turned to the subject of multipolarity, citing an eclectic set of authorities all agreeing that the post-World War II world order, both economic and political, is over, as is the brief unipolar moment of the 1990s when America ruled supreme. Instead we not only have a large number of major powers but an ever-growing number of rising powers. Thus the benign multilateral world order of the Pax Americana is giving way to a far more complex and confusing situation.
Mbeki then turns to the question of how Africa will position itself in this new situation, and observes that “There is no evidence or sign anywhere that Africa’s political and intellectual leadership is not only conscious of the need to define our Continent’s place in the emerging multipolar world, but is ready to act on this urgent matter”. Mbeki frankly adds that the AU is simply not up to this task, and so suggests to DIRCO that it work on this matter and then present its findings to the AU.
This is rather odd because for the last several years when she was foreign minister Naledi Pandor continually sang the song of multipolarity – something which she very much welcomed since it meant the end of the American-inspired order, and — like much of the ANC elite — she was instinctively anti-American. She saw multipolarity as meaning that the nations of the Global South would come into their own; would have an enhanced position at the UN, IMF and World Bank; and that South Africa in particular would benefit because of its association with other medium and great powers in BRICS.
This was an extremely naive view. For example, there is a degree of consensus that if the permanent membership of the UN Security Council is to be enlarged, the main candidates are Brazil, India, Germany and Japan. Similarly, as international relations become more multipolar, the countries likely to become more prominent are the four above plus South Korea, Indonesia, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Australia. That is to say, in every case the countries becoming more important are those with substantial populations that have achieved high rates of economic growth and become major economies.
As may be seen, there are no African candidates. Moreover, if one asks which African states might become middle powers, only four suggest themselves: Algeria and Egypt, both military regimes; Nigeria, which is in a frightful mess and whose economy has shrunk; and South Africa, which is hardly growing at all and is a likely target for US sanctions. The only possible candidate for middle power status is Egypt, with a population of 114 million and a long-term economic growth rate of 4.2% which will shortly cause it to overtake South Africa as Africa’s largest economy.
The real problem is that under the old Pax Americana there was an established multilateral system which respected international law and a rules-based order. Under that order all of Africa’s states became independent, with full membership of the international community and its various international organisations. Africa may be dissatisfied with its place within that order, but it was fairly benign.
A multipolar world will be a good deal less benign. As we can already see, Russia has invaded Ukraine and seems bent on reconstituting the old Russian empire. China, similarly, is attempting to restore its old imperial reach – it has taken over Tibet, is imposing itself on Xinjiang, has territorial claims on many bordering states, wants to take over Taiwan, and is attempting to turn the whole South China sea into a Chinese lake. And under Trump America is talking of taking control of Greenland and Canada. If these three great powers continue in this vein there will be no real multilateral order and all weaker states will be at risk.
Moreover if we add a further ten or twelve middle powers to the picture, it does not improve. In effect, we will have lost a rules-based order, might will be right and everything becomes transactional. Africa has everything to fear from such a situation. For a start, the collapse of a rules-based order would make the position of the UN impossible and it would either become impotent or perhaps even fold altogether. Then there would be no debate about African membership of the Security Council.
Moreover, the current order guarantees a certain equality. Every state has UN membership, and the UN defends national sovereignty. But under multipolarity there would be no equality and no real protection for national sovereignty. Already both Russia and China, in their search for African minerals, have displayed a rapacity reminiscent of early colonialism, and no Africans have dared raise their voices against that.
How could Naledi Pandor get multipolarity so terribly wrong? Mainly because her Islamist enthusiasm caused her to be hostile to the US and to the Western world in general without realising that that was about as good as it would get. A saner view comes from the prime minister of Singapore, Lawrence Wong: “The era of rules-based globalisation and free trade is over. We are entering a new phase – one that is more arbitrary, protectionist and dangerous. We must be clear-eyed about the dangers that are building up in the world.”
Meanwhile, Mbeki’s sources are quite correct: there is a definite progression of Islamist terrorism in many parts of Africa, and most African states have failed to meet that challenge adequately.
So Mbeki is quite right to challenge DIRCO to study these problems properly. Certainly, the naive enthusiasms of Naledi Pandor are no guide. And while we have a DIRCO which is distinctly friendly to Hamas and Hezbollah, it is unlikely that it will grasp the problem of Islamist terrorism.
So what needs to happen is for DIRCO itself to be cleaned out of such elements and to avail itself of proper expert advice. This would constitute a virtual complete reinvention of DIRCO, and it would almost certainly touch upon illicit international funding for the ANC. In other words, it is unlikely to happen while the ANC is still in government. One suspects that Mbeki is aware of all this. Meanwhile, by publicly pressing DIRCO to do its job properly, he is performing a useful public service.
DIRCO certainly needs to wake up, but so does South Africa. Ideally, DIRCO should have been a keen guardian of the national interest and should have tempered the ANC’s anti-American and pro-Hamas instincts so as to avoid precisely the sort of showdown with Washington which is now threatening South Africa’s economy and international reputation.
Pretoria has laid great stress on its BRICS membership, but it is notable that in Pretoria’s struggle with Washington, nobody from BRICS has made any attempt to come to South Africa’s rescue. This alone should be a cause for serious reassessment. But for that to happen there needs to be a foreign minister who is more than just a spokesman for the ANC’s prejudices and historical associations. We are still a long way from that.