Conflict, Security & Development

ISSN: 1467-8802 (Print) 1478-1174 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccsd20

Our identity is our currency: South Africa, the

responsibility to protect and the logic of African
intervention
Harry Verhoeven, C.S.R. Murthy & Ricardo Soares de Oliveira
To cite this article: Harry Verhoeven, C.S.R. Murthy & Ricardo Soares de Oliveira
(2014) Our identity is our currency: South Africa, the responsibility to protect and the
logic of African intervention, Conflict, Security & Development, 14:4, 509-534, DOI:
10.1080/14678802.2014.930594
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2014.930594

2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor &

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Published online: 07 Jul 2014.

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Conflict, Security & Development, 2014

Vol. 14, No. 4, 509534, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2014.930594

Analysis

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Our identity is our currency:

South Africa, the responsibility
to protect and the logic of
African intervention
Harry Verhoeven, C.S.R. Murthy and
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira
Heavyweights of South Africas ruling African

an African responsibility to protect has come

National

the

to constitute a major pillar of South African

responsibility to protect citizens in the case

foreign policy, this is not without its critics

of an unwilling or unable government is an

domestic or abroadand, as the Libya case

African concept, owned by the continent:

exemplifies, often presents decision-makers in

rooted in the securitydevelopment crisis of

Pretoria with tough real world dilemmas.

the past few decades, Pretoria stresses that

South Africa shares the intense scepticism of

there is an intellectual and political history of

China and Russia about Western claims of

intervention,

Western

value-based foreign policies. But much as

conceptions of R2P. While the conception of

anti-imperialist ideology and growth-centred

Congress

claim

separate

that

from

Harry Verhoeven is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of
Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He is the Convenor and founder
of the Oxford University China Africa Network and founder of the Oxford Central Africa Forum.
C.S.R. Murthy is Professor of International Organisation at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research
interests include the United Nations, international security, human rights, the Third World and Indias foreign
policy. His publications include two books and 50 book chapters and journal articles. He was chief editor for
International Studies.
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is Associate Professor in Comparative (African) Politics at the Department of Politics
and International Relations, University of Oxford, an Official Fellow of St Peters College, Oxford, and a Fellow of
the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin.

q 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This is an Open Access article. Non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly attributed, cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way, is
permitted. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.

510

Harry Verhoeven et al.

relations with other emerging powers inform

normative convergence with Russian and

South African foreign policy, it would be a

Chinese critiques of liberal peace-building: the

mistake to see Pretorias scepticism about

South African critique of the responsibility to

Western interpretations as a sign of profound

protect is more procedural than substantive.

Introduction
No discussion about South Africa and what kind of role it might play in a rapidly changing
world provokes more heated reactions than the question of legitimate intervention in

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Africa. Is South Africa the continents hegemon, asserting its voice in international society
and keeping its conscience at a time when the agenda of protecting civilians seems to be
stalling? Should South Africa aspire to be a normal state on the global stage, a middle
power pursuing its interests without remorse? Or ought Pretoria to attempt to overhaul
the unjust international system which locks in the hegemony of the powerful, who bend
international law and intervene in Africa under the pretext of saving lives and stability?
All three radically different viewpoints have considerable degrees of traction among elites
and the public and inform how South Africa thinks about what to do when sovereign states
fail, or are unwilling, to uphold the fundamental rights of their citizens.
This article argues that the responsibility to protect (R2P) sits at the heart of internal
and external debates about South African foreign policy and as such provides an invaluable
lens to understand change and continuity in the countrys role in Africa and the wider
international system since the end of white minority-rule in 1994. Post-Apartheid Pretoria
has formally anchored its external relations in the Pan-Africanist ideology of the African
Renaissance which posits African solutions to African conflicts: the mutually reinforcing
scourges of underdevelopment, bad governance and war are seen as the chief causes for
Africas perennial crises and for its global marginalisation. In the view of many in the
African National Congress (ANC) of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, this
has allowed Great Powers, during the Cold War but also after 1989, to exploit Africas
natural resources and to intervene on the continent when their interests are threatened,
abandoning itmost notoriously during the Rwandan genocidewhen no direct
political or economic gain is evident. The West upholding or suspending sovereignty, then,
in their eyes, is still organised hypocrisy.1
For these and other reasons, the ANC leadership was one of the driving forces behind
the creation of the African Union (AU) in 2001 2002, including the adoption of the AU

Our identity is our currency

511

Constitutive Act which sets out the most far-reaching interpretation of humanitarian
intervention by any multilateral organisation. Virulent criticisms of the inequitable
international system and Western power politics should thus not be understood as a
sovereignist rejection of the duty to protect civilians and arrest genocide or crimes against
humanity, but rather as a desire to strengthen the notion of an African responsibility to
solve the continents problems and shield its citizens from war and oppressive rulers.
The South African argument is that R2P is not a Western concept, but a universal concern
that in recent years has been abused as well as applied too selectively. For Pretoria,
instrumentalisation of and experimentation with the principle of R2P is a dangerous trend

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which undermines a fundamentally sound idea that Africa needs to confront its myriad
crises.
Put differently, the South African critique of the evolution of the R2P norm is more
procedural than substantiveANC heavyweights like Mbeki claim that humanitarian
intervention is an African concept, owned by the continentand reflects a wider challenge
to Western dominated imaginaries and practices of international order, even if South
African diplomats like Nyes suggested merger of values and interests that should underpin
legitimate and effective intervention.2 South Africa operates not in a vanishing
Westphalian world, but in an international society where solidarist conceptions of order
coexist, often unhappily, with many aspects of the old pluralism; shared values do not
necessarily imply shared interests, just as discourse coalitions should not obscure deeperlying disagreements on norms and rules.3
South Africa thus concurs with Chinas and Russias emphasis on international law and
shares their scepticism about American and European claims of value-based foreign
policies; joining the BRICS club (the S officially refers to South Africa since 2011) further
deepens the ANCs belief in a multipolar world and a balancing of Western power.
However, much as anti-imperialist ideology and growth-centred relations with other
emerging powers inform foreign policy, it would be a mistake to see Pretorias
disagreement with Western interpretations as a sign of profound normative convergence
with Russian and Chinese critiques of R2P and liberal peace-building.
This article begins by sketching the politico-historical context against which
contemporary policy must be analysed. Despite the momentous changes of the 1990s,
the trajectory under white minority-rule remains an influential legacy in South Africas
international relations today. Since the creation of the Union of South Africa, Pretoria has
maintained a complex, stormy relationship with the international system, advocating

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

reforms and feeling deeply misunderstood, particularly by Western powers that appeared
to let it down and to misread African on-the-ground realities. As part of the
Commonwealth, under Apartheid and under the ANC, South Africa has claimed a special
callinga task to explain Africa to the world, to represent it at global level and to take the
lead in reordering politics on the continent as part of a vision of enlightened self-interest.
Secondly, we discuss the African Renaissance project of President Mbeki (1999 2008)
which postulates the overarching principles and preferred instruments in South African
foreign policy under ANC stewardship. Mbekis Pan-Africanism is key to understanding
Pretorias thinking about international order, security and intervention, as it demonstrates

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that the R2P debate is not merely one in which emerging powers support or reject a
Western norm of suspending sovereignty to protect civilians. This article takes African
imaginations of intervention seriously, analysing how Pretorias interpretations, attitudes
and practices regarding R2P differ in subtle but important ways from those of other major
players in a multipolar world.
In this papers third section, we focus on the politics surrounding the 2011 NATO
military intervention in Libya. We argue that the latter is especially insightful to
understand how values, interests and perceptions relate to each other in the thinking of
important constituencies in South Africa. As in many other countries, while Pretoria
stresses its commitment to R2P pillars one and two and highlights that guaranteeing the
security of Africans requires a comprehensive political, economic and military approach,
R2P is almost invariably understood as intervention in South African public debates,
a tendency reinforced by the controversy over the Libyan civil war. Pretoria supported the
notion of a no-fly zone to protect the populations of Benghazi and other cities against the
troops of Muammar Qaddafi; at the UN Security Council it voted in favour of Resolution
1973. Yet following NATOs bombardments, a backlash among the ANC rank-and-file and
a growing emphasis by France, Britain and America that R2P really meant regime change,
South Africa became one of the interventions fiercest critics.
Finally, we tie these different threads together and argue that South Africas selfidentification as a moderately revisionist power and a leader of the African continent is key
to understanding how it sees international order. South Africas position on intervention
and international security more broadly is a function of its stated interestsSouth Africa
cannot thrive unless Africa flourishes; the values it proudly defendsAfrican self-reliance,
multilateralism and international solidarity; and its self-professed identity as a country
with a mission to lead in dismantling the nexus of conflict and underdevelopment on the

Our identity is our currency

513

continent, given its own unique domestic experience of peaceful reconciliation, its relative
economic prowess and its role as Africas unofficial representative in global forums, from
the G20 to BRICS.
Yet while the ANC claims that, in the words of one of its top diplomats, our identity is
our currency4meaning that because of its turbulent history and its physical location on
the globe, South Africa is uniquely placed to advocate a fairer, more inclusive international
system and a more consensual approach to R2P/interventionwe argue that this selfperception in its current form might undermine the stated foreign policy objectives of
Pretoria. Alternative conceptions of the responsibility to protectincluding important

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procedural considerationswould arguably be more likely to gain support in the

international community if South Africas combination of ideological rigidity, relatively
weak diplomatic capacity and limited material power did not blind it to how its moralising
revisionism is regularly perceived as hypocritical, nave and unworkable.

The long shadow of history: South Africa, domestic

politics and intervention
Since the independence of the Union of South Africa in 1910, foreign policy has been
vitally important in protecting the domestic order and resolving internal tensions, as well
as projecting South African ideas about the worldand Africa in particularoutwards.
Pretoria has always seen itself as uniquely positioned to take the lead on the continent, to
fulfil the role of intermediary between the West and Africa and to intervene in zones of
instability as a benign regional hegemon. At the same time, mutual disappointment
between South Africa and the West has been a central theme, as Pretoria has often clashed
with Americans and Europeans through the pursuit of normative and security agendas on
the continent which rhetorically overlap with Western tropes of order, but in practice often
diverge substantially. While the values of todays ANC very much differ from those of the
Apartheid regime, major continuities between the foreign policies of successive South
African governments, particularly regarding attitudes towards intervention, deserve to be
highlighted too.
The creation of the Union following the 1899 1902 Anglo-Boer War turned South
Africa into a self-governing dominion within the Commonwealth, its foreign policy loyal
to London. Its British politico-legal system incorporated laws demanded by the weary
Afrikaner population, including a system of increasingly institutionalised segregation.

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

The founding fathers understood the frail nature of the compromise between Anglophone
business and Afrikaner conservativism on which their country was founded. Jan Smuts in
particular sought to solve the tensions inherent to the Union: consolidating white control
of the economy; promoting South Africa as the dominant player on the continent; and
allying with London on global issues like the gold standard and geopolitical rivalry with
France and Germany.5
However, a consensus on what South Africa wasand what foreign policy should
support this visionremained elusive. Conservatives opposed Prime Minister Smuts
decision to side with Britain against Nazism. They sought to protect the Afrikaner nation

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economically and culturally against the outside world, criticising Smuts call to lead the
process of civilising Africa and help build the League of Nations/United Nations.6 Pretoria
joined the Allies and fought for a liberal world orderSmuts even wrote swathes of the
UN Charterbut the unionists were defeated in the 1948 elections. The rise of the
Apartheid state transformed foreign policy; not for the last time, domestic concerns
shaped South Africas international relations.
Daniel Malan and Hendrik Verwoerd vowed to solve the racial problem by rejecting
assimilation and prioritising separate development. Afrikaner chauvinism empowered
descendants of Dutch settlers who rose to the commanding heights of a state-dominated
economy and occupied the Unions political, legal and military institutions. In order to
protect Apartheid, foreign policy was put at the service of white domination.7 South
Africas Nationalists showed little interest in the United Nations. Yet as demands emerged
to implement the UN charterincluding equality of all people and the right to selfdeterminationthe anti-colonial agenda gained momentum. While the Nationalists were
isolationistsbelieving Westerners had little idea of African realities and the explosive
nature of racial differenceSouth Africa reluctantly engaged the US and Western Europe
to protect its institutionalised system of discrimination.8
Pretoria shifted its discourse from South Africas civilising mission on the continent to
another form of sacrifice for humanity: the struggle against communism. Both domestic
repression against the ANC and extensive military intervention in Rhodesias brutal
guerrilla war and the Lusophone former colonies caught up in wars of independence/civil
wars were organised under the anti-communist banner. Pretoria argued that the West
might not like Apartheid but had few options other than supporting a government that
was doing its dirty work in confronting Soviet proxies in Africa.9 Apartheid diplomats
echoed the title of this article: their clever positioningan international identity of a

Our identity is our currency

515

bulwark against the Red Menace, rather than a racist colonial statewas South Africas
currency until the late 1980s. Identity and intervention were, not for the last time, closely
linked.
Despite successfully selling the anti-communist narrative, relations with Washington,
London and Paris were constantly prone to mutual embarrassment. Pretorias
disappointment in the Wests limited empathy grew during the 1970s and 1980s,10
when opposition against Apartheid reached a crescendo internally. Simultaneously, the
regional outlook worsened as nationalist-leftist regimes captured power in Angola,
Zimbabwe and Mozambique, offering military aid to the ANC. The sense of an existential

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menace from within and from withoutTotal Onslaughtexplains the ruthless response
by an expanding security state.11 A clandestine nuclear programme began in the 1970s
with Israeli support.12 The South African Defence Forces and its proxies fought 20 years of
pitched battles, intervening incessantly across Southern Africa.
While overwhelming militarisation crushed internal challenges and forced African
governments to decrease support for the ANC, it did not solve the domestic contradictions
of Apartheid and increasingly isolated South Africa internationallyincluding a painful
embargoas its economy was grinding to a halt.13 The Nationalists won the war but lost
politically: no other country recognised the Bantustans; the expenditure on the security
state was unsustainable; and rapprochement with the West foundered on failure to reform
the political system.14 Apartheid ideologues distrusted diplomacy, but foreign policy was
vital in securing domestic order; the failure to effectively manage external relations
contributed substantially to the demise of white minority-rule.
Apartheids unravelling was a triumph for the African National Congress: decades of
armed and non-armed resistance wore down the racist system and turned it into a pariah.
World leaders hailed the ANCs vision of a new South Africa; the decision not to take
revenge on the oppressors and to respect private property (thereby accepting white
dominance of the economy for the foreseeable future) commanded admiration. However,
international enthusiasm for the movement after 1990 was not always reciprocated. Years
of clandestine struggle instilled a profound sense of suspicion and chronic distrust of
outsiders into ANC thinking. Many cadres felt the outside world had done too little in
confronting Apartheid.15 American and European leaders, which now hailed Mandela,
were seen to have adopted double standards and not to have (South) Africas interests at
heart. This legacy of troubled relations with the Westand the conviction that the ANC
owes little to the international community and cannot count on it to keep its lofty

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

promiseshas proved a crucial subtext in post-1994 diplomacy and therefore also in the
thinking about a responsibility to protect in Africa.

Africas right to intervene: Mandela, Mbeki and the

African Renaissance
The ANCs rise to power was approached cautiously in international society. Would the
movement replace its revolutionary principles with pragmatism? And what role would it
play on the African continent? Yet doubts about South Africa as a respectable player

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quickly morphed into expectations of Pretoria as the Wests central interlocutor in Africa,
even the main local advocate of the liberal agenda that appeared to have triumphed over
all other possible alternatives after 1989. Reassured by Nelson Mandelas soaring words,16
Western capitals expected Pretoria to take the lead in addressing Africas intractable crises.
This sentiment was captured by the Head of the United Nations Observer Mission in
South Africa: this country will soon become a catalyst for the rapid development of not
only the southern African region but the rest of the continent.17 Domestic liberal voices
too demanded a proactive, value-driven agenda.18
The hopes which Mandela incarnated, can, with the benefit of hindsight, be called
naively optimistic; they could never all be achieved given structural problems inside South
Africa and the nature of international politics. The ANC consolidated the termination of
the military nuclear programme and steered global non-proliferation discussions;19
Mandela sought a peaceful solution to war in Zaire/Congo in 1997; and Pretoria signalled
its commitment to becoming a force for stability in its own sub-region, through regional
integration and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).20 However,
Mandelas reconciliation magic did not travel far outside South Africas borders.
Diplomatic intervention could neither delay the Congo Wars, nor affect their course as
SADC members rushed to rescue beleaguered Congolese President Laurent Kabila.
Mandelas attempt to slap sanctions on Sani Abachas Nigeriawhere human rights
activists were executed and billions of petrodollars stolen by the regimeended in a
humiliating isolation of South Africa on the continental stage. And Pretorias intervention
in Lesotho in 1998, which hoped to arrest its slide into anarchy and restore constitutional
government, was criticised as Apartheid-style bullying. Nigeria, Congo and Lesotho, as
well as the failure to get the Great Powers to make concessions on nuclear disarmament,
were traumatic reality checks to the euphoria of the first Post-Apartheid years.21

Our identity is our currency

517

Despite these debacles, South Africa did not abandon international activism nor strong
views about intervention. Thabo Mbeki prioritised foreign policy throughout his
presidency, propagating the African Renaissance which he shared with his illustrious
predecessor.22 As a Pan-Africanist, Mbeki sought to meet the disillusionments of the first
four decades of post-colonial rule by reconnecting with the optimism of Kwame Nkrumah
and Julius Nyerere; he tried to overcome the criticism that the ANCs idealist
internationalism and the neo-realist culture of the Department of Foreign Affairs confused
foreign policy.23 Mbeki proposed a twin strategy to tackle the inter-related crises
of underdevelopment, African marginalisation on the global stage and the bad

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governance conflict nexus: in similar fashion to ANC-led South Africa, individual

African states would have to put their house in order through democratisation, rule of law
and pro-growth policies;24 simultaneously, they had to come together to reform the
Organisation of African Unitywidely seen as an ineffective club of autocratsinto an
African Union which could amplify the continents international voice, solve intractable
wars and punish unconstitutional takeovers of power.
The Mbeki Government invested heavily in African solutions to African problems,
taking the lead in organising the continent around the AU and getting member states to
sign its Constitutive Act,25 which embraced a humanitarian interventionist logic following
the principle of non-indifference, as the first AU Commission Chair, Alpha Oumar
Konare, put it.26 The AU outlawed coups and gave its Peace and Security Council the
power to authorise any action needed, including military operations, to stop genocide,
crimes against humanity or other large-scale human rights violations.27 While sovereignty
of individual states remained important, the transformation of the OAU, possibly the
worlds least interventionist regional organisation, into the AU, was a remarkable success
for liberal advocates of the universality of basic rights and associated responsibilities and
duties upon all to uphold them. Together with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan28 and
heads of states such as Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria), Abdoulaye Wade (Senegal) and
Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique), Mbeki built a coalition that aimed at institutionalising
the African Renaissance.
The notion of a Pan-African right to intervene, shaped by Mbekis determination to
tackle the conflict underdevelopment misrule nexus, must be situated in the context of
the 1990s and the Out of Africa pessimism of the international community, exemplified
by The Economists headliner The Hopeless Continent.29 Mbeki, who has long railed
against portrayals of black Africans as incapable of managing their own destinies, urged

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

fellow African leaders to adopt an agenda for security, development and intervention as a
matter of African agency and dignity: no longer depending on an outside world which
persistently fails the continent, but protecting Africa against external exploitation and
addressing glaring violations of the most basic rights of citizens. At a time when Western
countries question South Africas contemporary record on human rights and R2P, it is
worth recalling that the commitment to the non-indifference agenda emerged in large
part out of the disappointment in the dominant powers reluctance to effectively deal with
Africas crisis of underdevelopment, war and authoritarianism. In the words of South
Africas Ambassador to the UN between 1999 and 2009:

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Africa has found itself the subject of most of the Councils recent activities [ . . . ]
Today more than 60% of the items on the agenda of the Security Council are
devoted to addressing conflict situations in Africa. Consequently, Africans have
a disproportionately large stake in a strong, effective and legitimate Security
Council.
At the same time, it is clear that because Africa is not represented in the
permanent category of the Council, it is left to the discretion of foreign powers to
decide if, when and how the Council should intervene in African affairs.
Apathy or indifference from the Council has brought terrible
consequences . . . in Rwanda, the DRC and Sudan that are of little or no
strategic interest to the current Permanent Members of the Council.30
From the start, the African Renaissance was locked in an ambivalent relationship with
the Western-dominated world order. On the one hand, the AU needed outside political and
financial support to realise the Millennium Development Goals, build the organisation and
help pay for African peacekeeping missions on the continent. But on the other, South
Africas objectives were revisionist, in that it identified the inequitably structured
international system as perpetuating Africas marginalisation and conflicts. The ANC
government tried at once to be a bridge-builder (by serving on the UN Security Council,
frequenting G8/G20 summits and seeking to attract aid and investment) and a raucous
reformer. It refused to bite its tongue when confronted with what it saw as Western double
standardsglaring abuse of the emerging principle of making sovereignty conditional on a
states willingness and ability to protect its citizensin Iraq and Palestine.31
Mbekis African Renaissance and his discourse of Pan-African intervention as
responsibility troubled many across the political spectrum.32 Some criticised the AU,

Our identity is our currency

519

NEPAD and the right to intervene as a neo-liberal master plan in disguise,33 an

internationalisation of the macro-economic conservatism of the Growth, Employment
and Redistribution strategy the ANC imposed on South Africa and a tacit alliance
between South African capital and Western powers to protect their interests on the
continent, if necessary through military force.34 The most stinging criticism was that
Pretorias rhetoric positioned it on the moral high ground, but that its unwillingness to
solve the political crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe revealed that the emperor wore no
clothes.35 Western commentators denounced Mbekis Quiet Diplomacy and his refusal to
publicly condemn Robert Mugabes human rights record.36 What good use was it to argue

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that the continent was turning a corner, if neither the AU nor South Africa were able or
willing to brokerif necessary imposea durable political settlement in Zimbabwe? The
image of Mbeki and Mugabe shaking hands damaged Pretorias claims of a value-driven,
visionary policy.37
Pretorias 20072008 debut on the Security Council was a test of how much global traction
South African ideas around R2P, human rights and international security more broadly had.
The Mbeki Government had promoted its candidacy by presenting itself as a natural
intermediary between the West, emerging powers and the Global South, rooted in its unique
position as a country with strong links to all three: our identity is our currency. It argued that
it had accumulated a credible track record as reformer and accommodator at forums as
diverse as the Non-Aligned Movement, the G20 and the AU. Yet its Security Council term was
marred by controversy. Western critics alleged that South Africa merely paid lip service to
liberal values and R2P; ANC cadres felt that Pretoria did too little to end global apartheid.38
Thabo Mbeki was nowhere to be seen during the 2007 2008 post-election violence in
Kenya, his authority was gravely diminished in the wake of the turbulent December 2007
Polokwane conference of the ANC which saw Zuma oust Mbeki as party president and
Pretorias diplomats remained conspicuously quiet on the issue of international
prosecution of Kenyan politicians for their role in fanning the flames. Furthermore,
South Africas ambassador to the United Nations opposed draft resolutions condemning
the Burmese juntas human rights record in 2007 and proposing sanctions against
Zimbabwe in 2008, declaring that where his government was concerned, these situations
did not constitute threats to international security and should therefore be discussed in a
more appropriate UN forum, the Human Rights Council.
Such behaviour seemed to reveal that, despite South Africas embrace of Konares
principle of non-difference and its insistence that human rights were integral to all security

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

debates, Pretorias interpretation of R2P was either hypocritical or differed substantially

from views held in the human rights community. One of Britains leading diplomats,
working in New York when South Africa served on the Security Council, noted the irony of
rejecting the very instrument that had helped the ANC overthrow Apartheid: [i]t was one
of the most incredulous moments in my diplomatic career: hearing the South African
ambassador claim in the Zimbabwe debate that sanctions never work in international
politics.39 Simultaneously though, it should be observed that South Africas voting
behaviour during its two years on the Security Council was anything but revisionist or

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anti-Western; its support of 120 out of 121 approved resolutions, a considerable number of
which dealt with thorny African security issues, can hardly count as evidence of being a
spoiler.40
Perhaps the most important Security Council dossier for South Africa has been Sudan
the Darfur crisis, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (which gave Southern Sudanese the
right of self-determination) and (counter-)insurgency in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
South African actions came under scrutiny from international lobby groups41 and domestic
liberals42 who have accused the ANC government of going soft on Khartoums militaryIslamist Al-Ingaz (Salvation) regime which has sustained its hegemony through dreadful
crimes against its own population, resulting in the first arrest warrant ever issued by the
International Criminal Court against an incumbent head of state, Field Marshal Omar
Al-Bashir. Particularly when South Africa served on the Security Council, Thabo Mbekis
attempts at another round of quiet diplomacysupporting the weakening of UN resolutions
profoundly critical of the Sudanese Government, inviting Bashir to Cape Town and faulting
Darfurian rebels for egregious war crimes in Western Sudan, in the hope that appeasement
would make the regime more amenable to a peace agreement and AU-UN peacekeeping
missionscaused a stir. One commentator lambasted Pretorias approach to Sudan, seeing it
as exemplary of how what Mbeki described as constructive engagement with the intention
of protecting civilians produced the diametrically opposite result:
This strategy did nothing to alter the inequities of the international system and
yielded no benefits to South Africa or the South. The only winners were the
dictators and the clear losers were their victims [ . . . ] This outcome was not
emancipatory or in any way transformative. In so far as it helped to retain
repressive governments in power, the strategy was reactionary.43

Our identity is our currency

521

Rather than seeing its positions on Sudan, Burma and other controversial dossiers as a
divergence between South Africa and liberal principles of protecting human rights, the
ANC stresses that critics are misunderstanding South Africas interpretation of what R2P
means and how it can be implemented in practice. The tendency of Western actors to see
their values and interests as representing the only possible incarnation of R2P underpin
their misrepresentation of and misguided attacks on South Africas positions in the past 15
years. Both ANC heavyweights and career diplomats stress their commitment to the
normdespite what they see as flagrant abuse and damaging selective invocation since its
adoption by the UN General Assembly in 2005and remind critics that they played an

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essential role in rallying developing countries behind the outcome document.

Pretorias representatives claim that they ultimately helped pull reluctant Latin America,
India and other African nations over the finish line by insisting that Africa desperately
needs the document and that the procedural elements around R2P should act as a
restraint on manipulation of the principle by the P5.44 They underscore that a proactive
role in the Kenyan crisiswith President Mbeki rather than Archbishop Desmond Tutu
(who went to Nairobi to attempt to avert a meltdown in January 2008) as the leading
actorwould have been counterproductive, given that high profile intervention by a
regional rival of Kenya would jeopardise Kofi Annans mediation instead of providing
better protection for civilians. Finally, they also point out that South Africa has risked the
lives of thousands of its soldiers in operations in Burundi, Congo and Sudan, while the
P5s involvement in peacekeeping in Africa is virtually non-existent.
The ANC leadership believes that the African Renaissance will be stillborn if Africans,
within the framework of the AU Peace and Security Council, do not involve themselves in
the internal affairs of African sister countries unable/unwilling to address violent political
crises. But rather than conceiving intervention as solely a question of military operations,
South African diplomats insist that it is a comprehensive concept that prioritises dialogue,
capacity-building and national reconciliation. Ideas about protecting civilians can only
legitimately be operationalised through cumbersome but necessary deliberations.
These ideas are informed by several key components that characterise South Africas
foreign policy identity: its long-standing scepticism regarding Western military
interventions, which is connected to the ANCs passionate anti-imperialism and the
importance attached to South South solidarity and reform of the international system;45
its emphasis on development and security problems as two sides of the same coin, meaning
that political rights and socioeconomic rights are equally important and should be

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

pursued simultaneously through reformed international institutions partnering with

responsible governments;46 and South Africas own successful experience of a negotiated
transition of power-sharing and inclusive government in the context of a society scarred by
colonialism and regional conflict.47 The latter element especially explains why Mbeki and
other advocates of the African Renaissance believed that our identity is our currency:
South Africa, in their self-perception, is a well-placed, righteous norm entrepreneur.

R2P and its discontents: the Libya debacle

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Through the African Renaissance, South Africa has offered a bold interpretation of R2P
and of how to advance the security of one billion Africans; its foreign policy is defined by
what it calls the African Agenda and it has sent troops in harms way to protect civilians in
Darfur. Pan-Africanists underline that their thinking about the right to intervene has an
intellectual history of its own, separate from Western traditions of humanitarianism and
military intervention. However, South Africas first stint on the Security Council did little
to bridge the gaps in understanding with the US, France and Britain. The West has been
disappointed by Pretorias support for rogue regimes48 and South Africa has found its
broader argument with regards to interventionthat R2P must be part of comprehensive
reform of the way the international community approaches security in general, including
institutional mechanismspoorly understood or ignored altogether. These disagreements
have worsened in recent years.
After Zuma became President of the Republic in 2009, the foreign policy establishment
tried to improve its difficult balancing act of a Realist defence of South African interests
and the idealist transformation of Africa against the background of an accelerated shift in
global economic power in the wake of the Great Recession in the Western world.49 Going
beyond cynical accusationsthe African Agenda as some form of neo-colonialismor
starry-eyed adoration of the Pan-Africanist discourse on human rights and development,
it was observed that part of Pretorias dilemma is structural.50
South Africa faces classic trade-offs associated with middle power status:51 a certain
degree of leverage and influence in the international system, but also tangible constraints
on the quality and quantity of its diplomatic interventions and real limitations in terms of
material resources and soft power.52 Middle powers can shape the agenda and make a
difference in a chosen issue area (niche diplomacy53), but are destined to fail if their
ambitions are too wide-ranging or diverge too much from the interests or values of the

Our identity is our currency

523

dominant players in the international system: Pretorias brave new African security politics
is still some way off. Moreover, like other regional hegemons aspiring to a weighty global
voice, South Africa has found that its own backyardoften wrongly assumed to be a given
source of strengthand its limited success in rallying domestic constituencies behind its
foreign policy constrain its ability to shape global discussions.54
No recent crisis better illustrates South Africas dilemmase.g. engaging the West on
R2P or opposing its interpretation to further Pretorias own visionthan the Security
Council debate about how to deal with the murderous repression of the Libyan uprising
and the subsequent NATO intervention which played a crucial role in Muammar Qaddafis

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overthrow.55 The Arab Spring surprised the African continent. When after the fall of Zine
Al-Abdin Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak the Libyan Government resorted to large-scale
violence to quash the growing protests, the Arab League and the African Union scrambled
to design a common position. An ad hoc AU High Level committee on Libya, including
Jacob Zuma, proposed a negotiated settlement between Qaddafi and the increasingly
armed opposition but genocidal threats against the regimes critics in Benghazi and
elsewhere forced the dossier onto the Security Councils agenda. Amidst the rush to stop
Qaddafi, South Africa (for the second time a non-permanent member of the Council)
voted in favour of resolution 1973 and the creation of a no-fly zone over Libya: the murky
circumstances in which this vote took placeand the subsequent chaotic communication
by the administrationtriggered a passionate debate about the countrys national
interests, the importance of values and its post-1994 alignments with the Great Powers and
other African states.
For some, the Libya case revolved around South Africas identity as a nation that should
at all times stand up against violations of human rights and authoritarian regimes which
deny citizens the most fundamental liberties.56 In this view, South Africa has been an
international norm entrepreneur since Mandela, with the AU and its peace and security
architecture as its proudest achievement so far, rooted in the principle of non-indifference:
it is such value-driven behaviour that sets it apart from other countries and gives it
leverage in international negotiations. Liberals remind their compatriots of the
responsibility Pretoria has to protect endangered populations, especially on the African
continent.57 Subscribing to R2P in Libya was a high-profile opportunity for South Africa
to reconnect with its post-1994 identity as a solidarist nation in the international system.
Seen through a neo-realist lens of relative differences in power and the pursuit of
national interests in an anarchic environment, Libya contained both uplifting and sobering

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

messages. The disappearance of Qaddafi, the main challenger of Mbekis vision for the AU
and a funder of rebellions across the continent (including in Sudan and Congo where
South Africa invested heavily in post-conflict peace-building), has reinforced Pretorias
position on the continental stage, at minimal cost. Simultaneously, Realist voices noted a
worrying strategic inconsistency:58 while South Africas BRIC friends all abstained on
resolution 1973, Pretoria voted with America, Britain and France at a time when it was
cultivating alternative alliances, thereby distancing itself from the all-important group it
joined in 2011 to engage in crucial soft balancing.59
Moreover, the Wests ability to instrumentalise a fungible norm like R2P to depose

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recalcitrant African heads of state once again re-emphasised the huge political and military
power differential between Western countries and Africa.60 No degree of (South) African
opposition could have stopped Washington, Paris and London from favouring a military
solution, a lesson in realpolitik also learned in Cote dIvoire where ANC diplomacy failed
to broker an agreement and a joint France UN intervention in 2011 helped the pro-Paris
Alassane Ouattara win the power struggle against Laurent Gbabgo, who maintained strong
relations with Thabo Mbeki and Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
In the radically leftist vision of South Africa and its international responsibilities too,
Libya exemplifies unequal power relations, instrumentalisation of global norms and
Africas exclusion from debates on international security. This view, popular among young
militants and veteran Pan-Africanist cadres with strong ties to Havana and Beijing like
Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ebrahim Ebrahim, posits
that the ANC struggle against Apartheid was all about opposing colonialism and racism;
South Africa should continue this emancipatory struggle, opposing hegemony and
suspensions of sovereignty whenever it suits the powers that be. They advocate norm
subsidiarity, the development of rules and norms to protect weaker members of
international society against being trampled by the stronger ones.61 South Africa must
challenge the existing world order through a coalition of the exploited which overhauls
international institutions and exposes the hypocritical rhetoric of American-provided
global security.62 Such voices draw comparisons between the invasion of Iraq, Western
support for Apartheid and the ousting of Qaddafi;63 the West, its institutions and its
norms are fundamentally unreliable. This is an analysis captured perfectly by Thabo Mbeki
(currently the AU envoy to Sudan South Sudan after being recalled by his own ANC as
President in 2008), who struck back at Zuma from the left:

Our identity is our currency

525

To add insult to injury, all three African members of the AU ignored the
decisions of the AU on Libya, and voted for the treacherous UN Security
Council Resolution 1973 which the Western powers used to justify what was
effectively the imposition of imperial diktat both on Libya and Africa as a
whole, which we allowed to succeed [ . . . ]. This made no impression on the
agenda of the Western imperial powers, determined to pursue their strategic
objective we have mentioned, which is to transform all other countries into their
neo-colonies, wherever and whenever this is possible.64
The perspective of the ANC government on R2P, as exemplified by the Libya case, mixes

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elements of all three critiques/visions; the resulting (confusing) positions and logics
illustrate multiple problems facing South African foreign policy more broadly. South
African diplomats are at pains to underscore that they were right to vote in favour of
resolution 1973 and that they harboured no illusions regarding the threat faced by the
people of Benghazi; the international community had a duty to intervene to protect
human lives, something President Obama and President Zuma agreed on in a telephone
conversation right before the vote.65 Yet, as argued by National Security Advisor Welile
Nhlapo,66 what exactly R2P would look like in practice became a source of major
disagreement, a product of both power politics and perceptions at the time of the Libya
crisis and diverging interpretations of R2P by Western powers and emerging powers.67
While Pretoria agreed to a no-fly zone, government spokesmen claim that they did not
expect that NATO would assume responsibility for the military interventionthe North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation is not mentioned in the resolutionnor that the AU ad hoc
High Level committees efforts would immediately be terminated by French and British
airstrikes, eliminating the option of a power-sharing government and a peaceful exit of
Qaddafi from Libya. Even though diplomats privately admit that Zumas mediation efforts
were almost certainly doomed to fail in the absence of a willingness among the parties to
seriously consider a peaceful solution,68 the ANC National Executive Committee was
outraged when President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron torpedoed any political
process other than a total rebel victory; according to South Africas Deputy President
Kgalema Motlanthe, [the AU mediation effort was] flagrantly thwarted by the
intervention.69
Compounded by pressures from its rank and file and criticisms from Mbeki and
firebrand youth leader, Julius Malema, the ANC leadership fumed when it became clear

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

that the NATO intervention had special forces on the ground and was interpreting R2P as
synonymous with regime change. According to Pretoria, this represented a betrayal of all
three of the preconditions it set before endorsing resolution 1973: focus on a peaceful
solution; no boots on the ground; and no externally-led regime change.70 South African
anger particularly manifested itself vis-a`-vis Paris, which the ANC has long criticised for its
neo-colonial Franc
afrique policies in West and Central Africa. Coming only months after
France allegedly manipulated the Security Council into supporting the removal of Gbagbo
as president of Cote dIvoire to protect Paris economic interests there, the Anglo-French
interpretation of R2P confirmed the worst fears of the anti-imperialist factions in the

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ANC. Clause four of the resolution, which authorizes Member States [ . . . ] to take all
necessary measures [ . . . ] to protect civilians and civilian populated,71 in this
interpretation facilitated the murder of an African head of state. For the ANC grassroots,
this evoked echoes of other neo-colonial assassinations against enemies of international
stabilityLumumba, Soilih, Sankara.72
Three years on, South African decision-makers still denounce how France, Britain and
America were willing to sacrifice a broad consensus around R2P to settle scores with
Qaddafi and re-seize the initiative in North Africa after the Arab Spring caught them by
surprise and left them embarrassed as the pro-Western Ben Ali and Mubarak fell. One of
Pretorias top ambassadors commented: [o]n values we are clear: you cant kill civilians.
But we have issues with the mechanisms and sequencing that the West prioritises.73 While
South Africa still subscribes to the principle of non-indifference and African-led
humanitarian intervention, its hostility towards R2P has grown markedly (e.g. in UNSC
discussions around the Assad regime and the Syrian civil war), particularly as the
NATO intervention in Libya is blamed for the near takeover of Mali by radical Islamists in
2012 2013: [t]he stalemate on Syria can be traced back to Libya and how trust was
betrayed [ . . . ] Instability in the Sahel and Mali is a direct consequence of the Libya
intervention.74 The legitimacy of the principle and of the institutions involved has been
gravely tarnished in the eyes of ANC cadres.
The fallout over R2P in Libya has strengthened Pretorias desire to align with other
emerging powers, particularly since South Africa joined BRICS in 2011.75 This
re-energised Realism is driven by the need for trade and investment to boost economic
growth and by a desire to appease radical ANC militants, but part of this too is
unmistakeably soft balancing of Western hegemony. Although South Africas
interpretation of the right to intervene differs from that of China and Russia (and while

Our identity is our currency

527

normative convergence more broadly among BRICS members is questionable), the

combination of the relative decline in Western power and the apparent instrumentalisation of R2P in Libya provides fertile ground for deepening alignments and asserting BRICS
as a potentially counter-hegemonic institution, with Pretoria as Africas self-appointed
representative. The creation of a BRICS Development Bank, discussions about common
positions on Security Council dossiers and close co-ordination on climate change might
represent cautious efforts to reform the traditionally Western-dominated world order.
The tendency to reassert South African interests directly was visible in the 2012 election
of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Mbekis long-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs, as

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Chairperson of the AU Commission with the mission of establishing greater financial and
organisational independence vis-a`-vis the AUs Western donors. The bruising DlaminiZuma victory over the pro-French Jean Ping, for which Pretoria pulled out all the stops,
shows a South Africa more willing to flex its muscles and less willing, at least publicly, to
play its role as a bridge-builder between the West and Africa. According to a senior ANC
member, the election was about this: when a crisis erupts in Africa, who will the
Chairperson call first? Paris or an African sister-country?.76 Even if the ties that bind
South Africa and the West together remain deeper than the ANC publicly acknowledges,
Libya exposed major differences in how to operationalise international order and
intervention.

Conclusion: identity as currency or identity as

inflexibility?
This article has argued that understanding South Africas position on the responsibility to
protect is not just a question of analysing national interests or professed values. It is the
South African identity and, more particularly, the idea that this identity is South Africas
greatest asset on the global stagean interesting if all too convenient convergence of what
is in the countrys best interest, what it believes about the world and how it is seen by
othersthat shapes its foreign policy and its conceptualisation of Africans assuming
responsibility for the physical security of other Africans.
We highlighted the conceptual work that has gone into the African Renaissances
comprehensive approach to security and its emphasis that R2P cannot just be about
intervention; but we also underlined that historySouth Africas old notion of a mission
in Africa and its long-standing willingness to deploy militarily across the continent;

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

ideologyanti-imperialism and the continuation of the liberation struggle; and domestic

politicsnotably factionalism inside the ANCare key inputs too into the theory and
praxis of South African policies with regard to R2P. Those who dismiss the ANCs
elaborate discourse on identity would do well to remember Skinners astute observation:
Even if the agent is not in fact motivated by any of the principles he professes, he
will nevertheless be obliged to behave in such a way that his actions remain
compatible with the claim that these principles genuinely motivated him. To
recognise these implications is to accept that the courses of action open to any
rational agent must in part be determined by the range of principles that he can

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profess with plausibility.77

South African notions of intervention differ substantially from European or American
interpretations, but also those of China and Russia.78 South Africas vision flows directly
from the unique foreign policy identity post-Apartheid leaders proudly proclaim.
Yet while Pretoria complains vociferously about the inequitable world order and the
manipulation of norms by the powerful, it undermines its own African Agenda in
multiple ways that have little to do with outside actors. The central predicament is that
South African foreign policy lacks critical questioning of how its identity might not
always be an asset, but could actually blind it to key developments and outside
perceptions. For a country that urges others to empathise by taking history, context and
culture into account, South Africa does a poor job of taking some distance from its own
decisions and trying to understand how its discourses and actions regarding
responsibility, intervention and security are perceived elsewhere in Africa and in the
Western-led international system.
Despite claiming to propagate an alternative interpretation of R2P from the perspective
of Africa, a substantial gap exists between Pretorias overall pro-intervention thinking and
the attitudes of many developing countries, which may have been forced to accept R2P but
are keen to reassert sovereignty and stymie the efforts of global and regional powers to
intervene in domestic affairs.79 The ANCs moralising rhetoric, while perhaps sincere in its
desire to change the system and reflective of South Africas complex identity, is often
perceived at best as self-righteous and outright hypocritical at worst.
Many African states are not enthusiastic about Pretorias self-declared representation of
the continent in global circles and find that South African politicians are shockingly
misinformed about or disinterested in other African nationsone reason why anti-

Our identity is our currency

529

imperialist ideas proliferate within the ANC is that simplistic global narratives do not have
to factor in inconvenient local complexities, multiple agendas and the often bizarre
meandering of history. For all South Africas accusations levelled at Western powers of
ignoring the regional principle and Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, Zuma had no qualms
about sending hundreds of paratroopers to the Central African Republic in early 2013
without consulting any regional governments and without an AU mandate, as he tried to
counter French influence and, according to many insiders, defend South African mining
interests. Such unilateralism undermines Pretorias credibility, particularly when
compounded by deficient local knowledge, which in this case led to the deaths of scores

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of South African soldiers.

While some African actors complain of an overbearing, overly intrusive South Africa,
others think that Pretoria simply fails to live up to its own muscular but multilateral
interpretation of humanitarian intervention. For example, many ordinary Africans dislike
the ANCs all too inflexible standard solution for political crises in Zimbabwe, Congo and
Cote dIvoire. The recipe of national reconciliation and power-sharing, rooted in South
Africas own transition but all too often uncritically exported, has been exploited by
various African governments to refuse more fundamental concessions of reform; only in
Burundi has the Kempton Park model more or less born fruit. Similarly, since 2006,
several African countries, led by Ethiopia, have been deeply disappointed that Pretoria
could not be persuaded to play a bigger role in confronting Somalias Union of Islamic
Courts and later Al-Shabab. Its lukewarm support for the African Union Mission in
Somalia was criticised by Ethiopia, Uganda and other players as reneging on South Africas
own African version of legitimate intervention.80
In this respect, South Africas difficult relationship with the continent is further
underlined by its contributions to peacekeeping in Africa. Pretorias aid budget may be
rising rapidlyaccording to some studies, outperforming most Western donors as a share
of GDP81and many feel that a country which talks so much about African responsibility
should shoulder more of the burden in Somalia, Mali and South Sudan and pay a greater
contribution into the AU to give it autonomy from external donors. Part of the problem is
that South African National Defence Forces today are no longer Africas outstanding
fighting machine, as they were under Apartheid.82 With 30,000 fewer effectives, little
political backing and poor organisational choices, this is severely limiting South Africas
ability to contribute to AU missions. The operation in Burundi was marked by logistical
problems and disciplinary incidents with South African soldiers; the experience of

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

peacekeepers in Congo and Darfur reveals a dismal picture of difficult relations with
locals, faltering equipment and confusion over the mandate.83
The dysfunctionality of the armed forces is mirrored in a confusing foreign policy process
under the aegis of Zuma whose decision-making style is ad hoc and whose focus is on
domestic survival, not on grand international strategy. Key decisions like the resolution 1973
vote are taken by an extremely small circle, with the Department of International Relations
and Cooperation often left in the dark about foreign policy manoeuvres by the Presidency, as
was the case in Central African Republic and resolution 1973; in the words of one senior
Ambassadors devastating auto-critique: [t]he Libya case shows the danger of only worrying

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about foreign policy when someone calls you: we looked like idiots. We were fooled but have
only ourselves to blame.84 The limiting of the policy process to a tiny elite around the
president and a handful of party leaders also partly explains the abysmal communication of
South African diplomacy, both vis-a`-vis the publicto whom, for example, it was never
properly explained what R2P in the Libya case meant and how Pretoria would work with other
Security Council members to protect the populationand vis-a`-vis international partners.
In conclusion then, like other emerging powers, South Africa is a conflicted state with
multiple identities which, depending on the dossier and the targeted audience, compete for it
to adopt the role of supporter, spoiler or shirker.85 Since 1994, the ANC has helped to build
the African Union and offered an interesting alternative vision of R2P in the form of African
solutions to African problems, arguing that by virtue of South African economic and military
strength and its unique identity, Pretoria should take the lead on the continent as well as
advocate reform at the global level. Many engaging proposals have been shared with the
international community, but the central challenge for the next decadeif South Africa is to
be true to its professed core valuesis twofold: to give more meaning to its Pan-Africanism
by (paradoxically) becoming more interested and invested in Africa; and to find ways of
making its criticism of the international system more effective and less adversarial,86 without
losing its commitment to ethical principles, substantive as well as procedural. As the recent
past shows, this is a tall order indeed given that South Africas foreign policy identity not only
liberates and inspires, but also blinds and paralyses.

Acknowledgements
This article is part of a collaborative research project on Global Norm Evolution and the
Responsibility to Protect (www.globalnorms.net), generously funded by the Volkswagen Foundation
through its Europe and Global Challenges programme.

Our identity is our currency

531

Endnotes
1. Krasner, Sovereignty. For background on the responsibility to protect and its development, see Rotmann, Kurtz
and Brockmeier, Major Powers, in this special issue.
2. Nye, Redefining the National Interest.
3. Hurrell, On Global Order, 8 11.
4. Interview with Ambassador Nozipo Mxakato-Dixeko,
Pretoria, February 2013.
5. Davenport and Saunders, South Africa.
6. Smuts, The League of Nations; Anker, Imperial Ecology.

Policy.
42. Hans Pienaar, Doomed To Be a Lost Cause
Despite Good Intentions. Sunday Independent, 6
January 2008.
43. Nathan, Interests, Ideas and Ideology.
44. Interview with Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, Johannesburg, February 2013. Cp. Rotmann, Kurtz and
Brockmeier in this special issue.

7. Geldenhuys, South Africas Search for Security.

45. Nathan, South Africa: A Coherent Foreign Policy.

8. Shearar, Against the World.

46. Statement during the Informal Consultations of the GA

9. Barber and Barratt, South Africas Foreign Policy.

10. Saunders, South Africa, Human Rights, and the United

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41. Human Rights Watch, South Africas Troubling Foreign

Nations.
11. Alden, Apartheids Last Stand.
12. Liberman, The Rise and Fall.
13. Crawford, The Domestic Sources and Consequences.
14. Lowenberg and Kaempfer, The Origins and Demise.

on the Report of the Secretary General In Larger

Freedom: Towards Security, Development and Human
Rights for All, 6 April 2005. See Kumalo, South Africas
Position, 71 75.
47. Coady and Solomon, Deconstructing Constructive
Engagement.
48. The Economist, South Africas Foreign Policy.

15. Ellis, External Mission.

49. Habib, South Africas Foreign Policy.

16. Mandela, South Africas Future Foreign Policy.

50. Burgess, South Africa: Benign Hegemony and Resistance.

17. King, Keynote Address, 3.

51. Serrao and Bischoff, Foreign Policy Ambiguity.

18. Seymour, Global Dialogue, Human Rights and Foreign

Policy.

52. Alden and Le Pere, South Africa in Africa.

53. Cooper, Niche Diplomacy, 5 9.

19. Leith and Pretorius, Eroding the Middle Ground.

54. Flemes, Regional Power South Africa.

20. Alden and Soko, South Africas Economic Relations.

55. Neethling, Reflections on Norm Dynamics.

21. Bischoff, External and Domestic Sources.

56. Adam Habib, Fly or No-fly is the Question. Sunday Times

22. Ryall, Caught Between Two Worlds, 397.

(Review), 27 March 2011; Lihle Mtshali, Africans are

23. Vale and Maseko, Thabo Mbeki, South Africa and the

Taking Quiet Diplomacy Too Far. Sunday Times (Review),

Idea.
24. Landsberg, The Quiet Diplomacy of Liberation.
25. Landsberg, South Africa and the Making.
26. Konare, Inaugural Speech.
27. AU, Protocol Relating to the Establishment.
28. Annan, In Larger Freedom.
29. The Economist, 13 May 2000. Available at: http://www.
economist.com/printedition/2000-05-13 [Accessed May
2014].
30. Kumalo, South Africas Position, 23.
31. Barber, Mandelas World.
32. De Waal, Whats New in the New Partnership.
33. Taylor and Nel, New Africa, Globalisation and the
Confines.
34. Daniel et al., The South Africans have Arrived.

27 March 2011; Mondli Makhanya, We Dont Take Charge

in Africa, but Get Very Prickly about Those Who Do.
Sunday Times (Review), 10 April 2011.
57. Raenette Taljaard, South Africa Lacks Human Rights
based Foreign Policy. The Times, 15 July 2008.
58. Interviews with senior diplomats, Pretoria, January
February 2013.
59. Institute for Security Studies, Libya: UN Passes No Fly
Zone Resolution.
60. Greg Mills and Terrence McNamee, Hedging their Bets in
the Libyan War. Sunday Times (Review), 3 April 2011.
61. Acharya, Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders.
62. Moore, A Decade of Disquieting Diplomacy.
63. Xolela Mangcu, Fly or No-fly is the Question. Sunday
Times (Review), 27 March 2011.

35. Alden and Schoeman, The Hegemon that Wasnt.

64. Mbeki, The African Union at 10.

36. Herbst, Mbekis South Africa.

65. Interview with a senior American diplomat, February 2013.

37. Freeman, South Africas Zimbabwe Policy.

66. Interviews in Pretoria, February 2013.

38. Sidiropoulos, South African Foreign Policy.

67. Bellamy and Williams, The New Politics of Protection.

39. Interview, London, June 2013.

68. Interviews in Pretoria, January February 2013.

40. CCR, South Africa, Africa, and the United Nations.

69. Personal interview in Pretoria, February 2013.

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Harry Verhoeven et al.

70. Interview with several of South Africas top diplomats,

February 2013.
71. UNSC, Resolution 1973. Emphasis added by the
authors. For the full text: http://www.un.org/News/
Press/docs//2011/sc10200.doc.htm#Resolution
[Accessed September 2013].
72. Interview with an ANC youth leader, February 2013.

Economic Relations with Africa: Hegemony and its

Discontents. The Journal of Modern African Studies 43
(3), 367 392.
Anker, Peder, 2001. Imperial Ecology. Environmental Order in
the British Empire, 1895 1945. Harvard University
Press, Cambridge.

73. Interview with Graham Maitland, Khartoum, July 2013.

Annan, Kofi, 2001. In Larger Freedom. Towards Development,

74. Interview with Kgalema Motlanthe, Pretoria, February

Security and Human Rights for All. United Nations

2013.
75. Alden and Schoeman, South Africa in the Company of
Giants.
76. Interview with one of the NEC top six, Pretoria,
February 2013
77. Skinner, Some Problems in the Analysis, 299.

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Alden, Chris and Mills Soko, 2005. South Africas

78. See, respectively, Brockmeier, Kurtz and Junk on

Publications, New York.

Barber, James, 2004. Mandelas World: The International
Dimensions of South Africas Political Revolution 199099.
James Currey, Oxford.
Barber, James and John Barratt, 1990. South Africas Foreign
Policy: The Search for Recognition. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.

Europe, Junk on the United States, Zhang and Liu

Bellamy, Alex J. and Paul D. Williams, 2011. The New

on China and Kurowska on Russia, all in this special

Politics of Protection: Cote dIvoire, Libya and the

issue.

Responsibility to Protect. International Affairs 87(4),

79. Mayall and Soares de Oliveira, The New Protectorates, 17.

80. Interviews with senior South African diplomats,
September 2013.
81. Vickers, Towards a New Aid Paradigm.
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