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South Africa, BRICS, and Global Governance
How SA Tried to Change the World and Succeeded in Changing Itself
(Draft 31 May 2017: Comments welcome, but please do not cite without permission)
Philip Nel Department of Politics University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand [email protected] Abstract: Since the dawn of a democratic order in South Africa in the early 1990s, the country has had the ambition to play an important role in shaping global governance. Right from the start, though, there were ambiguities and tensions in this ambition. While embracing liberal globalization, South Africa at the same time also tried to exercise issue leadership in a range of global governance venues in order to promote the interests of developing countries, and in particular of Africa. Closer cooperation with and eventual membership of BRICS gave further impetus to South Africa’s desire to be a regional leader and global player, but has shifted its overall orientation away from embracing liberalism to the promotion of more developmental-state and “sovereignist” approaches. This shift was not due solely to BRICS membership, as it has been brewing in policy discussions and domestic political debates in South Africa since the mid 2000s. However, BRICS membership clearly coincided with its consolidation. This contribution traces this evolution in South Africa’s orientation by looking at the factors that made South Africa attractive to the other BRICs, and how BRICS membership coincided with a marked shift in South Africa’s domestic development approach and in its orientation to and behaviour in global governance. It also assesses this evolution by raising the question of whether South Africa has become more or less of an inclusive social order. Introduction
South Africa was invited to join the BRIC group of states on 23 December 2010 by the
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Yang Jiechi (Besada, Tok and
Winters 2013). This followed extensive lobbying by South African President Jacob Zuma
during 2009-2010 (Stuenkel 2013) among the other BRICs, Brazil, India, and Russia. The
invitation came just a year into the first term of President Jacob Zuma, who was elected
President by Parliament in 2009, and can be regarded as a major foreign policy success of the
Zuma era. This chapter argues that it was more a mixed blessing than an unqualified success,
though. On the plus side, it allowed South Africa to join an important agenda-setting and
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operational club of emerging global and regional powers, thus providing a new outlet for
South Africa’s long-standing ambition to make a difference to global governance. In the
process, two costs were incurred.
The first and most important is that BRICS membership has not, as hoped for by the Zuma
government, contributed to “the radical transformation” of the South African economy in
favour of a more inclusive, state-led development-focused growth model. In fact,
developments since South Africa joined BRICS have deepened the exclusivist, limited-access
nature of the South African economy. A number of structural weaknesses, some of which are
leftovers from the apartheid era, but reinforced by policy choices made since 1994, prevent
South Africa from achieving the dream of a non-racial, inclusive open-access that is promised
in the 1996 Constitution. The net effect of these weaknesses is that a large segment of the
South African population, about a quarter to a third, find themselves systematically excluded
from the benefits of a modern industrialised economy. To combat this, the Zuma government
embraced the notion of “radical economic transformation,” to be achieved through a state-led
industrial development project that would enhance Black participation in the economy and
would lead to the elimination of poverty by 2030. If anything, exclusion has worsened since
2010, despite the commercial opportunities that BRICS membership brought, and South
Africa’s increasing commercial presence in Africa. By perpetuating and deepening South
Africa’s dependence on primary commodity extraction, the close association with China in
particular has not brought South Africa closer to halt the relative decline of its manufacturing
sector, and has done little to reverse the education and employment disparities that are some
of the worst legacies of apartheid. It would be wrong to blame BRICS membership
exclusively for the continuation of the structural and institutional weaknesses of the South
African economy. Most of the blame rests with the way in which President Zuma has
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developed a strong neo-patrimonial hold on key levers of the economy, particularly State
Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and the organs of state procurement and fiscal management. These
instruments have been used, often in ways that disregard constitutional rules and constraints,
to create and capture rents for him, his closest allies, and segments of the Black business elite.
BRICS membership provided some means to oil this rent-creation machine, through a range
of commercial and infrastructural deals between South African authorities and BRICS
members.
The second cost of BRICS membership has to do with South Africa’s foreign policy
orientation, and its current contributions to global governance. Most significantly, BRICS
membership provided legitimacy for, and a means through which, the Zuma government
could make its mark as the leading regional power in Africa. Despite a range of ambiguities,
South Africa’s original post-transition foreign-policy orientation was predominantly that of an
emerging middle-power and bridge-builder (Schoeman 2000; Jordaan 2003). Post-apartheid
South Africa embraced multilateralism as a vehicle to link the legitimate development
concerns of poorer states and the opportunities provided by a globalised liberal economic
order. By 2017, this orientation has not completely disappeared. Gradually, and significantly
so since 2010, a second aspiration, that of being a regional power, has become prominent
(Qobo and Dube 2015). This orientation represents an alternative approach to globalisation
than the middle-power approach, and aims more explicitly at securing regional hegemony,
both for the sake of prioritising domestic development, but also as a means to join in the
establishment of alternative centres of what Carmody calls “gregional” power in global
governance, capable of challenging “Western” hegemony (Carmody 2012). South Africa was
invited to join BRICS largely because of its economic preponderance and leadership
ambitions in Africa, and BRICS membership both legitimated and provided additional means
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for South Africa to secure its status as a regional hegemon. This reorientation of South
Africa’s external role was accompanied by a much more inward-looking re-prioritising of
“the national interest” (see below), and a more instrumental appreciation of how the rest of
Africa could contribute to South Africa’s well-being. On the global stage, and, as a corollary
to the inward looking regional-power orientation, South Africa is more willing today than in
the early post-apartheid era to support the anti-liberal “sovereignist” agenda also favoured by
other BRICS members.
The story of South Africa’s membership of BRICS is thus a tale of how South Africa, by
originally setting out to change the world for the betterment of itself and of its continent,
ended up recalibrating its domestic development and its global orientation, and not
necessarily for the better. In what follows, I relate this story in three parts. The first shows
why South Africa and the then four BRICs states found each other attractive to start off with,
and why the active diplomacy of the Zuma presidency had a favourable reception. The second
episode focuses more directly on how BRICS membership shaped latent and emerging
tendencies in South Africa’s domestic and foreign policy orientations. A third part looks at
how, despite the expressed desire of President Zuma, BRICS membership has coincided with
a weakening, not an improvement, of the capacity South Africa to become an inclusive social
order. A final section concludes by situating the preceding episodes in the context of a
conceptual typology that notes a fundamental isomorphism shared by all the BRICS members,
South Africa included.
1. South Africa as “another BRIC in the wall” (Carmody 2012)
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Being invited to join BRICs in 2010 was an important event for South Africa. It did not only
reflect successful diplomatic efforts on the part of the Jacob Zuma administration, but also
cemented South Africa’s reputation as an emerging regional power with global standing. The
SA government hoped to exploit the commercial and diplomatic opportunities that
membership offered to support and deepen the “New Growth Path” (NGP) – announced in
2010, and since then replaced by the National Development Plan (NDP) as the long-term
political plan aimed at eliminating poverty and halving inequality by 2030 (see Table 1 for a
South African Timeline). In promoting the NGP, and the NDP, the growth trajectories and
experiences of Brazil, China, and India were regarded as analogous to that of, and as models
for, South Africa. It was also projected that South Africa, in partnership with the BRICs,
could contribute to and benefit from the growth potential of Africa. Zuma, in contrast to
Mbeki who was sceptical about China’s goals in Africa, was impressed by the commercial
opportunities that China (and other BRIC members) held, and saw BRIC countries as crucial
partners in cementing South Africa’s place in Africa, in promoting agendas for global change,
and in enhancing Zuma own particular domestic agenda (see Zuma 2013).
<<Table 1 here>>
By 2010, China was already South Africa’s main trading partner, taking 8.8 per cent of its
merchandise exports, mainly ores, slag and ash, and iron and steel. At that stage, the USA
took 7.6 per cent of SA’s exports, and Japan 6.9 per cent. China accounted for 13.9 per cent
of all merchandise imports into SA, mainly electrical machinery and appliances, footwear and
clothing. India also featured as one of SA’s top 10 export destinations (taking 2 per cent of
total merchandise exports), and as one of its five most important suppliers. In contrast, Brazil
and Russia took only 1 and 0.4 per cent of SA’s exports respectively (SACU 2012; Brand
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South Africa 2012). Expectations were high that membership of BRICS would enable South
Africa to explore its comparative advantages in increasing exports to all of these markets,
specifically in fruit and related products, ores, and machinery (IDC 2012). Inward foreign
direct investment (IFDI) from China and India into South Africa grew noticeably since 2003,
and India became one of the top five sources of IFDI to South Africa between January 2003
and July 2015 (Sanchez 2015). By the end of 2011, South Africa – in terms of stock— had
become the eighth largest recipient of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). In
return, by 2011 a fifth of South Africa’s stock of OFDI was in the BRIC countries, mainly
China. This share was slightly more than the total stock of South Africa’s OFDI to Africa in
2011 (UNCTAD 2013).
Hence, and obviously, growing commercial relations between South Africa and some of the
BRICs (mainly Chin and India) did play a role in the invitation that the BRICs extended to
South Africa to join the group. In addition, South Africa’s proven track record as a supplier of
mineral commodities, and its leading role in the development and provision of mineral-related
services, made it an attractive partner for the commodity-hungry China and India. The total
value of South Africa’s mineral reserves is estimated at US$2,5 trillion. South Africa leads
the world in the mining of platinum, chrome, vanadium and manganese, is the world’s third-
largest producer of gold, and excels in the provision of mining-related services (BRICS
2011). This, coupled with the sophistication of South Africa’s service delivery in the fields of
personal and corporate finance, and in telecommunications, stimulated BRICs interest.
However, it was not only the size of the South African market or the degree of economic
exchange between South Africa and the BRICs that secured SA a place at the BRICS table in
2010. SA is a midget compared to the other members. In 2016, SA held only the 30th position
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in GDP measured in constant 2005 international dollars, factoring in purchasing power), and
at $736 billion (in constant international dollars) its total output was less than 4 per cent of
China’s, about 9 per cent of India’s, 20 per cent of Russia’s, 24 per cent of Brazil’s, and 0.6
per cent of total world output (IMF 2016a). Also in terms of trade, South Africa was a small
player in 2010, providing only 4 per cent of imports into India, just over 1 per cent into China,
0.4 per cent in the case of Brazil, and 0.2 per cent into Russia. (IDC 2012).
Despite its relative smallness, South Africa was attractive as a future BRICS member because
of a mix of a number of factors, additional to its growing commercial links with some of the
existing members. It is difficult to place these in a strict rank order of importance, but there is
good reason to believe that South Africa’s aspirations to be “the gateway to Africa” played
the most significant role. In addition, South Africa’s credibility among a variety of actors as a
global bridge-builder and reform-minded participant, made it an attractive partner for a group
who saw itself as the core shapers of an alternative global order that would not challenge
liberal globalisation tout court, but aimed at making globalisation work more to the benefit of
the likes of emerging markets and their partners in the Global South. The perception of South
Africa as the gateway to Africa, and as a credible and respected reform partner were based on
the way in which it re-integrated with the global, and African, economy after 1994, the moral
weight of its own domestic transition, and its proven role as bridge-builder in global
governance in the 1990s and early 2000s.
On the most basic level of identity conception, the SA leadership embraced and cultivated the
notion that its transition from apartheid to non-racial inclusive democracy was an exceptional
moral achievement. And, indeed, it was. SA was eager, and was encouraged, to carry its
message of peaceful change, rule-bound justice, and reconciliation onto the world stage, and a
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distinct idealism centred around these themes could be observed in its foreign policy right
from the start (Becker 2010).
Over time this was translated into a global reformist élan: the pursuit of a more equitable
distribution of power and privilege on the global stage, and the celebration of rule-based
multilateralism as the preferred means to secure the interests of developing countries in a
globalising world economy. The notion that South Africa’s transition from apartheid was
exceptional and that it is thus entitled/honour bound to help to make the world more just and
protect the weak, continues as an implicit identity-driver in its foreign policy up until today.
The most recent White Paper on South Africa’s Foreign Policy (DIRCO 2011) and the glossy
20 Year Review - South Africa 1994-2014, published by the SA Presidency (2014), emphasise
South Africa’s “unique approach to global issues” and its commitment to carrying the
principle of “ubuntu” (the virtues of other-directedness, non-confrontation, and compassion)
to the world.
Underlying this idealised self-conception are some material interests, but it would be wrong
to not also appreciate how this self-conception shaped South Africa’s behaviour during a
large part of the post-1994 years. As far as the material interests are concerned, South
Africa’s most immediate post-apartheid desire was to fully integrate with the global political
economy as a means to grow out of the confines that apartheid imposed and invited. This
implied an acceptance of the liberal principles underlying the global economy, an ideological
price that was offset by a commitment to global reform and the promotion of an agenda that
would favour the dispossessed and marginalised globally (Nel, Taylor and Van der
Westhuizen 2001; Jordaan 2012).
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In stark contrast to the protectionist/isolated years of 1985-1990, post-apartheid South Africa
embarked on an ambitious programme of economic liberalisation – a dramatic “gamble on
investment” as one commentator aptly described it (Nattrass 1996; see also Nel 2002). This
was a programme of rapid liberalisation of external economic relations, coupled from 1996
onwards with a liberal domestic macro-economic policy (titled the “Growth, Employment,
and Redistribution” – GEAR programme) that combined prudential state budgeting,
conservative monetary policy, privatisation, and broadening of the participation black South
Africans in private economic ownership and management (so-called Black Economic
Empowerment – BEE – changed to BBBEE - Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment -
in 2003). Many, but not all, of the protectionist mechanisms used by the embattled apartheid
state were abolished, South Africa embraced the results of the Uruguay Round of GATT trade
negotiations, and joined the WTO. South Africa was forced to join the WTO as a “developed
economy” and not as a developing economy. This implied deeper tariff cuts and fewer
developmental concessions. Deeper integration of South African business into the global
economy also implied the relocation of headquarters of South African multinational firms,
ostensibly to exploit the opportunities that internationalisation brought. South African imports
and exports, as a percentage of GDP, increased from a five-year average of 39 in the period
1990-1994 to 60 in the period 2005-2009 (World Development Indicators 2015).
South Africa committed under the GATT Uruguay Round to bind all but two per cent of all
its tariff lines and replace non-tariff barriers with transparent tariffs (Edwards 2015). By 2010,
the mean applied weighted tariff rate on all South African products was a third of what it was
in the early 1990s (World Development Indicators 2015; see also DTI 2010). On a regional
level, South Africa joined the Southern African Development Community (SADC), initiating
a SADC free-trade area that came into effect in 2008 (Sandrey 2013). Not qualifying for
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membership of the Lomé Convention and its preferential treatment of African, Caribbean and
Pacific (ACP) states, South Africa (as part of Southern African Customs Union which also
includes Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland) negotiated an extra-regional Trade,
Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) with the European Union, signed in 1999
(Krapohl, Meissner & Muntschick 2014), and also a free trade agreement with the European
Free Trade Association states (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland) that came
into effect in 2008. It also benefitted from the African Growth and Opportunity (AGOA) Act,
passed into law in 2000 by the US Congress. AGOA provides quota- and duty free entry of
some African goods to the US market, and contains trade preferences that are more
favourable for African states than those contained in the WTO’s Generalized System of
Preferences (Prinsloo 2016).
Compared to the large divestments from South Africa in the 1980s, the next two decades was
a boom time for IFDI, leading to a tenfold increase in the value of IFDI stock, reaching an
average value of US$111,570 million in the period 2005-2009 (UNCTAD 2016). This
represented an increase from just over 8 per cent of GDP in the period 1990-94 to close to 40
per cent in the period 2005-2009. The stock of OFDI by South African institutions constituted
an average of 5 per cent of its GDP in the period 1990-1994 (Verhoef 2011). By 2010, it had
increased to 25 per cent of GDP (UNCTAD 2012).
One of the most important tools through which post-apartheid South Africa secured IFDI was
the signing of a large number of bilateral investment treaties that made extensive provision of
third-party arbitration in the case of investor-state disputes. During the immediate post-
apartheid period (1994-1998) South Africa entered into 15 BITs, mostly with European
countries, and by 2005 had signed 41 such treaties, some of them also with other developing
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states (Peterson 2006). By 2009, forty-two BITs were in place. While it was clearly part of an
aggressive strategy to re-internationalise as quickly as possible by providing assurances to
risk-averse investors, there is also evidence that the South African authorities entered into
these without much thought about the range of issues that could lead to investor-state
disputes, and the implications of these agreements for national policy autonomy (Poulsen
2014). We will see how South African attitudes towards this essential liberal instrument of
global integration changed dramatically by the time that South Africa joined BRICS.
Regional integration was a very important component of global economic reintegration, and
provided the basis for the notion that South Africa acts as a “gateway” to Africa. Such status
is largely self-assigned, and not necessarily popular in the rest of Africa (Alden and
Schoeman 2013; Obi 2015), but it was instrumental in persuading the original BRICs
members to invite South Africa to join. For many observers, economic integration with the
rest of Africa amounted to malign economic penetration by South African companies,
resulting in deindustrialisation in certain industries, the squeezing out of local retail, the
dissemination of liberal economic norms, and contradictorily, the imposition of non-tariff
trade and other barriers on neighbouring states (Daniel and Bengu 2009, Southall and
Comninos 2009, Carmody 2012, Nel and Taylor 2013). The mining, retail, beverages,
telecommunication, and banking sectors in South, made extensive use of the pro-Africa focus
of the Mbeki era (see below) to expand their foreign investment stock across the continent. By
2011, South Africa was the fifth largest holder of FDI stocks in Africa, and the second largest
developing-country investor in Africa (after Malaysia) (UNCTAD 2013).
Although driven by different domestic agendas, and following different sequencing schedules,
there was close symmetry between South Africa’s post-1994 drive to liberalise and the global
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integration programmes of the BRIC members. All five BRICS members experienced a
deepening of integration into the global economy in the 1990s and 2000s, albeit from
different baselines. Both India and Brazil instituted programmes of trade and international
financial liberalisation that coincided South Africa’s in the early 1990s, albeit from lower
levels of existing integration than South Africa. Noticeably, South Africa was already
relatively deeply embedded in the global economy, compared to the other BRICS, by the time
of the first fully inclusive democratic election in South Africa in 1994. This was due to its
role as supplier of highly-valued mineral commodities, including gold and platinum, and the
fact that its financial institutions had important international linkages. By the time that it
joined BRICS, South Africa had increased its exposure and was the most economically
globalised of all the BRICS. Axel Dreher’s 100-point index of economic globalization, which
incorporates both de facto capital and trade flows, as well as the depth of existing de iure
restrictions on such flows, provides a useful guide to measure a state’s integration with the
global economy (Dreher 2006). Taking 5-year averages, the relative scores of the five BRICS
in the period 1990-94 (with the score for 2010-2014 in brackets) were: Brazil 46 (51), China
40 (50), India 24 (42), Russia 31 (53), and South Africa 51 (65). Global reintegration, and
extensive penetration of the African continent was good for the South African economy, In
real terms, South Africa’s GDP was 77 per cent larger by 2012 compared to 1994. In per
capita terms, this translated into real growth of 31 per cent (World Development Indicators
2015).
South Africa also had a significant impact as a “mobilizer” (Vom Hau et al. 2012) of the
African region, in particular to get the region to look for ways in which it could benefit from
integration into the liberal world economy. It also persuaded the Rest of Africa to be more
forthcoming in accepting standards of good governance as defined by Western powers and the
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International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Aligning Africa closer with global liberal norms, in return for better economic access to
Western markets and deep Official Development Assistance (ODA) pockets, turned out to be
the main legacy of the Mbeki Presidency (1999 – 2008). Mbeki personally invested in and
provided ideological justification and organisational capacity for the NEPAD (the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development) programme, which became the flagship of Africa’s
programme of rebirth and accelerated economic and political modernization (Taylor and Nel
2002). In 2002 NEPAD became an official African Union project, with headquarters in
Johannesburg, South Africa, and aimed at enhanced economic cooperation within Africa and
between Africa and its international donors and well-wishers, based on infrastructural
modernization, trade and investment facilitation, and improving corporate and public
governance on the continent. Although China was by 2010 already significantly involved in a
large number of African states, Brazil, India, and Russia were especially encouraged by SA’s
proven capacity to influence Africa’s agenda and its economic successes in Africa to embrace
South Africa’s self-appointed status as “gateway” to a continent whose economic prospects
looked particularly rosy in 2010 (Taylor 2014).
South Africa’s commitment to a liberal (open) global economic order, and its willingness to
take the lead in persuading the rest of Africa that this order could also benefit them, was
balanced by a desire to assist in enlarging the development opportunities for poorer states, and
to do so in terms that would echo South Africa’s own domestic commitment to justice and
non-discrimination (Jordaan 2012). By 2010, post-apartheid South Africa’s contribution to
global governance, and in particular its commitment to represent a “South” agenda in the
existing institutions of global governance, were well established. Highlights include its
membership (as the only African member) of the G20 since its founding in 1999, the first of
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two stints on the UN Security Council (2007 -2008, and again in 2011-2012), and privileged
participation in the so-called Heiligendamm process launched by Germany in 2007 in which
the G7 group of industrialised states interacted with China, India, South Africa, Brazil and
Mexico on a systematic basis, leading to the enhanced global-economic role of the G20 in
2009 (Vickers 2008). South Africa’s enhanced status and global ambitions also contributed to
the formation of the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) in 2003 (Nel and
Stephen 2010). This enhanced South Africa’s role in the arena of South-South cooperation
and led to important policy initiatives, including the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and
China) alliance that was formed in the lead-up to the 2009 Copenhagen Conference of the
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The
timeline in Table 1 provide additional evidence of the prominent role that South Africa played
both in institutions of the Global South, and in hosting global policy conferences in which it
could hone its capacity to influence the agendas of the Global North. The 2000s turned out to
be the high-point of this middle-power, bridge-building role, especially in the context of
negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and in the G-20 processes. As Stephen
(2013: 97) notes, South Africa’s negotiation strategy in the WTO has been less
confrontational and more integrative than either of its close ideological partners in IBSA (see
also Donna Lee 2006, Nel and Stephen 2010). Since the creation of the WTO’s Dispute
Resolution Mechanism in 1995, South Africa has not been a complainant in a single case,
although it has been a respondent in five, and a 3rd party in seven. In contrast, India has been a
complainant in 23 and Brazil in 31 (WTO 2017).
As a bridge-builder, South Africa was influential in pushing the industrialised countries to
live up to their own liberal principles, in particular as far as liberalization of agricultural trade
is concerned, and to accept a developmental agenda in such contentious matters as intellectual
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property rights and in the Doha Round of WTO negotiations that kicked off in November
2001. In turn, South Africa has used its influence to keep developing countries engaged in
global trade negotiations after the famous African walk-out at Cancun in 2003 (which South
Africa joined), and to accept (at least some of) the so-called “new” trade issues, such as trade
facilitation, trade and investment, and trade facilitation that industrialised states wanted to
impose (Lee 2006; Jordaan 2012). Straddling the distributionally polarised agendas of the
South and the industrialised states means that South Africa’s role was (and remains) often
ambiguous, and that it is sometimes perceived as having moved too closely to a position
where it not only provides legitimacy to a global neoliberal agenda on trade and development,
but has been co-opted by the major powers (Bond 2004, Jordaan 2012, Lee 2006).
South Africa’s middle-power bridge building diplomacy also supported different
revisionist/reform attempts in other fora of global governance. These included attempts to
balance/block the power of the North in climate-change negotiations, pursuing institutional
reforms such as a revision of voting rights in international financial institutions and expanded
permanent membership of the UNSC, and influencing the agenda of the G-20 to be (Stephen
2013 ; Nel 2010). South Africa was widely perceived and valued as an emerging reform-
orientated middle power (Schoeman 2000, Jordaan 2003), committed to multilateral, rule-
based global governance, and well placed to challenge Western dominance, but also to bridge
divides between the established powers of the industrial North and the global South. This
fitted the global reformist interests of the BRIC nations very well.
2. South Africa as a BRICS member: From bridge-builder to regional power
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BRICS membership coincided with important changes in the foreign and domestic policies of
South Africa. Some of these had a long gestation, dating back to the middle of the 2000s and
cannot be attributed exclusively to the effect of BRICS membership. However, BRICS gave it
a certain momentum, focus, and longevity. Two important trends stand out. First, and in
contrast to the almost helter-skelter manner in which South Africa embraced global economic
integration on liberal terms between 1994 and 2007, there has been a distinct national-
interests-first reorientation in economic development outlook, and trade and foreign policy in
general. Secondly, South Africa has become more explicit in challenging some of the
universalist and interventionist principles that underlie Western liberalism’s approach to
human rights, good governance, and humanitarian intervention, prompting some observers to
speak of a “sovereignist turn” in South Africa’s orientation. By enumerating these changes in
what follows, I do not want to create the impression that South Africa has turned its back
totally on the policies of the 1990s and 2000s that stood it in reasonably good stead. Middle-
power bridge-building is not dead, and neither is South Africa’s basic commitment to a global
economic order integrated on liberal precepts. However, by the time that Jacob Zuma became
President in 2009, criticism of the failings of these policies had become much more prominent,
and the process of looking for alternatives was well under way.
Three processes/documents were crucial signposts of the changes that would come to fruition
after Zuma took over the presidency of the ANC in 2007, and became President of the
country in 2009. The one was the work of the National Planning Commission (NPC) from
2010 to 2013, including a “Diagnostic Report” – a comprehensive review of strengths,
weaknesses, and opportunities facing South Africa. The Diagnostic Report formed the basis
of the eventual National Development Plan, and was quite critical of the lack of achievement
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in a number of areas, including employment, broad-based quality education, and socio-
economic and spatial inequalities (National Planning Commission 2013).
To overcome these shortcomings, the NDP proposed that government policies be geared
toward turning the South African state into a capable, strong, and accountable developmental
state, associated with explicit industrial and labour-market policies that aim at decent job
creation and lifting per capita income levels across the board. Foreign policies and external
economic relations should support these goals, and the range and sequencing of external
liberalisation and integration with the global economy must be made dependent on domestic
industrial and redistributive goals. Chapter Seven of the NDP made it clear that foreign
relations, including projects focused on shaping global governance and cementing South
Africa’s position in Africa, in future had to serve one and only one purpose: promoting the
national interests of South Africa, conceived in terms of overcoming the shortcomings cited
above, and identifying the key global partners that could assist in this:
“The shift of global power towards developing countries provides South Africa with
an opportunity to maximise its regional and international influence over the next 20 to
30 years. Policy making should be driven by the objectives set out at the inaugural
meeting of the National Planning Commission in May 2011: to grow the economy,
reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of all South Africans. In other words,
government’s global and regional policy-making stance should be South Africa-
centric. Policy-making should improve the country’s functional integration in the
region, on the continent, among developing countries – especially with key states like
Brazil, India, and China – and in the world, with measurable outcomes.”
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The 2010 South African Trade Policy and Strategy Framework produced by the Department
of Trade and Industry (DTI 2010) pointed out that while South Africa had been quite
successful since the early 1990s at liberalising trade by reducing tariffs and cancelling them
altogether on more than 50% of imports, this had not assisted South Africa to give full effect
to its industrial development plans and diversification of exports. To align trade and industrial
development better, it argued, a strategic developmental approach to tariff policy had to be
introduced – analogous to the managed trade policies followed by “successful developing
economies” – meaning China, in particular.
The third document that clearly heralded the realignment towards a domestic developmental
agenda was the 2011 White Paper on Foreign Policy issued by the re-named Department of
International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO 2011). Titled “Building a Better World: The
Diplomacy of Ubuntu”, the White Paper continued to frame foreign policy in terms of the
unique and exceptional “South African experience”, normatively couched in the universalist
terms of “Ubuntu”. Beyond this normative veneer, though, the White Paper is quite hardnosed
in its explicit commitment to the promotion of national interests, conceived of in the same
domestically-orientated terms that the NDP uses. While the themes of protecting
multilateralism, and promoting cooperation to secure “a just, humane, and equitable world
order of greater security, peace, dialogue and economic justice” receive fair hearing, the
White Paper repeatedly emphasises that the goal of South Africa must be to “build an
environment in which it can realise its national socio-economic agenda as well as its political
and security interests” (DIRCO, 2011: 10). As was the case with the Diagnostic Report
mentioned above, and in Chapter 7 of NDP, the White Paper contained an implicit critique of
the universalistic role of bridge-building middle-power that was associated with South
Africa’s foreign policy under Mandela and Mbeki, now replaced with a solid commitment to
19
pursue a narrow range of national interests above all else. By the time of the fifth BRICS
Summit in 2013, the first held in South Africa, the conception of national interests as defined
in terms of a developmental approach to domestic and internationally-focused policy making
was firmly established as the distinctive trademark of the Zuma era in South African politics
(Zuma 2013).
This re-conceptualisation of national interests – manifested in these various documents and
other policy declarations (Qobo and Dube 2015) – and the policy and behavioural changes to
be reviewed below, can be seen as manifestations of a distinct “sovereignist” turn on the part
of South Africa. “Sovereignist” here refers to a normative preference for domestic and
international arrangements that create maximum room for national autonomy protection of
sovereignty – shared by all the BRICS, what Miles Kahler calls “maximum policy discretion
to deal with the effects of globalization” (Kahler 2013). As Laïdi argues:
“The BRICS form a coalition of sovereign state defenders. While they do not seek to
form an anti-Western political coalition based on a counter-proposal or radically
different vision of the world, they are concerned with maintaining their independence
of judgment and national action in a world that is increasingly economically and
socially interdependent. They consider that state sovereignty trumps all, including, of
course, the political nature of its underpinning regimes.” (Laidi 2012: 614)
By the time of the 5th BRICS summit (held in South Africa) in 2013, such a sovereignist
approach became a distinguishing feature of the Zuma era. It is no coincidence that BRICS’s
most important sovereignist initiative to date – the New Development Bank, was agreed to at
the 5th Summit, followed by the announcement of a Contingent Reserve Arrangement at the
20
6th Summit 2014 (in Brazil). More recently, the idea of a new credit rating agency, aimed
against the dominance of the established “Western” agencies, has also been floated.
Although hardly explored in the literature on a developmental state in South Africa (see the
edited volume Edigheji 2010), there is a close association between the notion of the protection
of sovereignty/national autonomy and the pursuit of national development strategies in an era
of (and in reaction to) economic globalisation (Polidano 2001). In addition, the aspiration to
be recognized as a regional power, in contrast to the role of middle-power bridge-builder, also
presupposes a change of priorities. Bridge-building uses the strategy of issue entrepreneurship
to carve out the policy space in which the developing world – including Africa - can benefit
from economic globalisation. The regional-power approach, in contrast, relies on organising
and mobilising the region to guarantee that the regional power secures its national interests
first and foremost (Vom Hau et al. 2012). In turn, the regional power undertakes to provide
regional public goods, such as the provision of peace-making and peace-keeping resources,
protection against foreign intervention, and representing Africa in global governance fora
(Hentz 2008, Vickers 2013).
The national-interests first, sovereignist turn in South Africa’s interaction with the world is
reflected in three significant policy innovations during the years of BRICS membership. Two
relate to domestic development priorities, while a third is reflected in South Africa’s voting
behaviour at the UN.
Domestically, a distinct counter-movement against perceived restrictions on national
autonomy grew in intensity from 2009-2010 onwards. The specific context was a review of
the forty-two BITs that South Africa entered into since 1994 (DTI 2009). As explained above,
21
this formed part of a “gamble on investment” which characterised the first decade of the post-
apartheid era (Peterson 2006). BITs have been interpreted as a crucial dimension of the
legalization of world politics. Abbot et al. (2000) describe legalization as a form of
institutionalization that is characterized by heightened obligations, greater precision in rules
and, perhaps most crucially, the delegation of rule interpretation and enforcement to third
parties. It is this later feature of the BITs that South Africa had entered into that precipitated a
rethink on its part, initiated by a case brought by Italian investors (with a holding company in
Luxembourg). The plaintiff claimed that the stipulations of the Mineral and Resources
Development Act of 2002 (MPRDA) constituted an infringement of their property rights and
that it was unlawful as due process was allegedly not followed. What the plaintiffs found
particularly damaging were the stipulation of the MPRDA that South Africa maintains
national-control of mineral resources, and that all companies had to embark on programmes
of Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) (see Piero Foresti, Laura de Carli
& Others v. Republic of South Africa, ICSID Case No. ARB(AF)/07/01). The claim was
settled in 2010 (mining rights were exchanged for a 5% Black empowerment arrangement),
but the case triggered a comprehensive review of the potential implications of BITs for the
national policy autonomy of the South African state. This culminated in the rescinding of a
number of BITs with European states from 2012 onwards (Norton Rose Fulbright 2014,
Bosman 2016). By the end of 2015, a new South African “Protection of Investment Act”
came into effect, offering investors protection in national courts, mediation, recourse to state-
to-state arbitration, but ruling out third-party investor-state arbitration. South Africa was not
alone in questioning the wisdom of bargaining away national policy autonomy for the sake of
IFDI, and the issue of state-investor arbitration became a major bone of contention in debates
about mega-regional trade agreements such as TTIP and the TPP. UNCTAD also devoted
22
considerable attention to generating new guidelines on sovereign-friendly investment regimes
(UNCTAD 2016: Chapter 3).
A second manifestation of the inward-looking national-interest-first change in South African
policy comes in the form of increasing policy “warnings” that South Africa in future will tie
its tariff policy much more closely to its development needs. In an implicit criticism of the
rapid and deep liberalisation of South African trade in the 1990s, the Department of Trade and
Industry (DTI) has started issuing warnings that “South Africa will be resolute in using tariffs
to defend domestic industry and support industrial development” (cited in Creamer, 2017; see
also Dube and Mandigora 2012). In his pronouncements on this matter (February 2017) the
DTI Minister did add that South Africa cannot afford to become “overly protectionist,” but
pointed out that South Africa will no longer be a push-over when it comes to trade policies
and trade remedies” (cited in Creamer 2017). Above, I noted that South Africa has as yet not
been a complainant in a single WTO dispute resolution proceedings. Judging by the
Minister’s words, it would seem that from 2017 onwards, South Africa will be ready to resort
to that type of remedy if it deems its own industrial interests to be at stake. Part of this can be
regarded as South Africa’s response to growing global protectionist trends that came to a head
with the BREXIT vote in the UK and the election of President Trump in the USA. However,
the decision to align tariff policy closer with national industrial policy dates back to
2012/2013 (DTI 2013).
The third manifestation of South Africa’s sovereignist turn is a pattern of voting in the UN
that shows an increasing hesitancy to criticise states for behaviour that could be construed as
breaches of human rights and other international liberal norms. Again, this sovereignist turn
did not originate with the Zuma presidency, but had gradually been gestating in the 2000s in
23
contrast with South Africa’s early commitment to the promotion of human rights, which the
Mandela presidency elevated to a specific aim of the new South Africa’s foreign policy. In
1998, South Africa’s National Plan of Action for the Promotion and Protection of Human
Rights (NAP) was submitted to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
and emphasized that all human rights were “‘universal, indivisible and interdependent’” (cited
in Graham 2016: 63). Over the next decade, South Africa’s approach to the matter
increasingly became ambiguous (Jordaan 2014). As Graham (2016) shows, South Africa’s
policy on the international promotion of human rights continues to be an evolutionary
learning process, in which a broader range of interests/forces came to the fore than in the
heady, single-mindedness of the early post-apartheid days of the 1990s. South Africa
continues to be quite consistent in voting for and promoting thematic human rights concerns
in various UN bodies, including the right to development that has become a theme of its
membership of the Human Rights Council (HRC; member since 2014). However, in both its
terms as non-permanent member of the UNSC (2007-2008; 2011-2012), and in its voting
behaviour in the UN General Assembly Third Committee and the HRC, South Africa is
increasingly hesitant to support country-specific resolutions that could be construed as
interference in the domestic affairs of member states, or that manifest a broad interpretation of
the “interventionist” terms of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. South Africa’s policy aims at
squaring competing values: promotion and protection of human rights to give effect to the
normative exceptionalism that the country continues to claim, and at the same opposing
attempts by Western nations to weaken norms pertaining to non-interference, territorial
integrity and sovereignty. Human rights remain a bone of contention in the UN system, and
while this battle is not of South Africa’s making, its very legitimacy as a spokesperson for,
and its aim of becoming a permanent UNSC member on behalf of Africa, are dependent on its
credentials as an opponent of liberalism of the interfering kind (Jordaan 2012). As far as the
24
latter is concerned, South Africa (for most of the time) consistently found common ground
with the BRICs (Ferdinand 2014) Its decision in 2016 to withdraw from the Rome Statute that
established the International Criminal Court (ICC), in line with a general African disquiet
about the perceived anti-African bias of the ICC, should also be interpreted as a manifestation
of South Africa’s growing enthusiasm for a sovereignist approach to global affairs. The
decision to leave the ICC was rescinded in 2017, though, after a South African court found it
to be unconstitutional and illegal (Torchia 2017).
3. How successful was the BRICS experiment?
The previous section argued that South Africa’s profile domestically and in terms of global
governance has changed markedly in the last decade, away from that of a middle-power that
embraces liberal economic policies and attempts to build bridges between established
industrialised states and aspiring industrialising states. In its place has emerged an aspiring
regional power, focusing on how its role in Africa and the world can contribute to the
consolidation and deepening of the developmental state model of national development.
BRICS membership was intended to contribute to securing South Africa’s status as Africa’s
regional power, and to assist in the restructuring of the South African economy. Since 2014,
the latter goal has increasingly been couched in terms of a new slogan, namely “radical
economic transformation” (Bhorat et al. 2017). What this means is as yet not clear, but there
is evidence that points to a coordinated attempt by the Zuma Presidency to secure, both
through legal and dubious means, a form of patron-client control over crucial state-owned
25
enterprises (in particular the Electricity Commission –ESKOM, and the railways - Transnet),
state procurement channels, and strategic parts of the mining sector. Zuma has also been staff
the state sector with a number of preferred clients, while getting rid of opponents, such as the
highly-respected Minister of Finance (Pravin Gordhan) who was unceremoniously sacked in
April 2017. Ostensibly, all of the above is done in order to promote Black ownership of and
participation in the national economy, but for some observers it is clear that it actually is
geared towards benefitting a select group of cronies around Zuma, and a small section of the
emerging Black business class in South Africa. The degree to which BRICS membership
plays into this strategy of “state capture” (Bhorat et al. 2017) is not fully transparent, but it is
obvious that the BRICS connection was instrumental in “securing” a large and lucrative
nuclear energy deal with the Russians. One of the reasons that President had a falling out with
his previous Minister of Finances was that the latter was strongly opposed to this type of
dubious “deal making”. Although Mr Gordhan finds himself in the political wilderness (in
May 2017), his opposition to the nuclear deal has been vindicated by a court ruling that
instructed the President to follow transparent tender procedures and submit the allocation of
the right to build new nuclear reactors in South Africa to Parliament (Cotterill 2017).
Six years is not a long time in the development trajectory of a country, and it is too soon to
draw any firm conclusions about the longer-term effects of BRICS membership, and the
sovereignist turn described above, on South Africa’s domestic situation. There are indications,
though, that the trends traced above have not assisted in making South Africa a more
inclusive social order, despite all the words that have been spilled on this elusive goal since
the late 2000s. I rely on the notion of inclusiveness as defined by Ranieri and Ramos (2013).
They make a distinction between inclusivess of participation and the inclusiveness of sharing
in the benefits of economic growth. The first can be traced by the International Labour
26
Organisation’s indicator of the employment-to-total (available) labour force, expressed as a
percentage. The second can be measured as the head-count poverty rate, that is, the portion of
the population that find themselves in poverty as a percentage of the total population. In
addition, a measure of income inequality can also be used to trace the second dimension of
inclusivity.
<<Table 2 here>>
By the time that South Africa joined the BRICS, the economy grew at a rate that kept pace
with population growth, and recorded a GDP per capita growth rate of 1.5 per cent in 2010
(after the slump in 2009 due to the global financial crisis), and 1.7 per cent in 2011. Since
2012, this growth rate has contracted markedly and has been negative since 2015 (see Table 2
for available summary economic statistics). As a result, the employment rate has crept up to
beyond 26% by 2016. Young South Africans are particularly affected by persistent high
levels of unemployment. According to Moody’s (Laing 2017), unemployment amongst the
34-year old and younger amounted to 48.6% in the third quarter of 2016, and 65.5% among
those younger than 24 years (excluding students). Festus, Kasongo, Moses and Yu (2016)
find that the largest concentration of the unemployed is among young, poorly-educated black
residents of rural Gauteng, which is the mining and industrial heartland of South Africa.
Unemployment also signals that a sizeable portion of the black population remains excluded
from suitable education that would prepare them for formal employment. However,
educational imbalances are not the only determinant of unemployment. High unemployment
in post-apartheid SA is related to (a) the continual shrinkage of the non-mineral tradeable
sector and manufacturing in particular (see Figure 1 and Table 2, and Rodrik 2008), and (b) to
27
the rigidities of the labour market. Manufacturing, as a percentage of GDP, has declined from
around 20 per cent in the mid-1990s to about 13 per cent in 2015. This places a structural
constraint on the ability of the economy to absorb newcomers to the labour force. Other
labour-market rigidities include the role of organised labour and of business management.
The former is a labour aristocracy, and one of the alliance partners of the ruling ANC, and
keeps upward pressure on wages, including the (likely) introduction of a minimum wage.
Management/business responds to rising wages by increasing productivity and shedding
unskilled labour, thus exacerbating unemployment (Seekings and Nattrass, 2015: 232).
BRICS membership exacerbated the imbalances captured by Table 2 - primarily by increasing
South Africa’s long-term structural vulnerability and inhibiting job creation/employment
growth in the non-mineral tradable sector. Minerals account for about a quarter of total South
African merchandise exports, up from about 10 per cent in the mid 1990s. This dependence
on mineral exports, and South Africa’s exposure to China, are points of vulnerability, not
strength. China takes 10 per cent of South African exports, and is the country’ largest single
export market. Global demand for South Africa’s commodity exports is also largely
determined by China. Sixty per cent of all South Africa’s commodity exports to BRIC
countries in 2015 were minerals, and two-thirds of those went to China alone. It is no
surprise, therefore, that shrinking Chinese demands for commodities reduced imports from
South Africa by a quarter from 2014 to 2015, and at US$30 billion was lower in 2015 than it
was in 2011, having grown by a factor of 8 between 2006 and 2011 (BRICS 2016: 193).
Exposure to SSA, the basis of the “gateway to Africa” selling point, adds to this vulnerability.
SSA accounts for 30 per cent of South Africa’s exports, and most of its FDI assets held
outside China. It is an open question whether the BRICS’s NDB and CRA would be able to
compensate for these vulnerabilities.
28
<<Figure 1 here>>
South Africa’s lack of inclusivity is reflected dramatically in the high, and rising, income
inequality levels (Anand, Kothari and Kumar 2016). Consumption (income) inequality has
increased from 57.8 on a 100-point Gini scale in 2000 to 63.1 in 2009. The consumption share
of the lowest quintile shrunk from 3% to 2.7%, and the share of the middle class – the next
three quintiles – also shrunk by about 4%. The consumption share of the top quintile
increased from 62 to 68%. The most recent income survey (2011) records a Gini of 69 for
disposable income (DI), and a staggering 77 for market income inequality (MII = income
before tax and transfers). The income share of the lowest quintile was 1.54% (DI) and 0.30%
(MII), and the share of the top quintile 74.5% (DI) and 81.4% (MII) respectively (income
surveys reported in UNU-WIDER 2016; see also World Bank 2014). It is clear that South
Africa is having success in reducing net (after tax and transfer) inequality, but that the
structural factors that determine MII (before tax and transfer) inequality contribute to keeping
South Africa amongst the group of most unequal states in the world (Woolard et al. 2015;
World Bank 2014).
Thanks to a range of fiscal interventions, in the form of social assistance cash transfer
programmes, poverty rates have declined markedly since 1994. Most of these have their
origins after 1996 when the state compensated for its turn to an orthodox neoliberal
macroeconomic strategy (GEAR – see Table 1) by increasing cash transfers to vulnerable
groups, reaching as many as 17 million South Africans in 2017, at a cost of more than
ZAR10bn per month. Such social assistance is the main source of income for the majority of
poor households in the country. Fiscal redistribution – stimulated by democratisation
29
(Seekings and Nattrass 2015) has been a success, and by 2011 (which was when the last
census took place) lifted almost 4 million people out of poverty. Between 2006 and 2011, the
percentage of households whose income fall below the national poverty line decreased from
57 per cent to 46 per cent (see Seekings and Nattrass 2015 on different poverty measures and
findings). In 2011 alone, fiscal transfers reduced extreme poverty (income below $1.25 a day)
from 35% (market income) to 17% (disposable, after tax and transfer income) (World Bank
2014). Whether such fiscal largesse is sustainable is an open question, though, and a long-
term study by the South African Treasury warns that a growth rate of at least 3 per cent is
required to continue paying for it (Ferreira 2015). As Table 2 shows, South Africa last
achieved that rate of growth in 2008. Currently, the state is running a fiscal deficit, state
borrowing is increasing, and there is a long-term current-account imbalance. This is set to
worsen in view of the downgrade of South Africa sovereign credit rating to junk status by
credit-rating agencies Fitch and Standard and Poor’s in April 2017, with Moody’s
contemplating a similar move. In the absence of sustained and inclusive economic growth
based on renewed industrialisation of the South African economy (Jonas 2017), more than the
current 17 million South Africans (out of a total of 52 million) will be dependent on cash
transfers just to maintain a basic standard of living, and there is no guarantee that the state
will be able to afford it.
Conclusion
Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa form an exclusive club, but not in the sense that
they will never want to spoil a good acronym by allowing other states to join. Rather, they are
exclusivist, in the sense that the overall configuration of their political, social and economic
institutions systematically excludes or marginalises significant segments of their populations,
30
each in their own way (but see Alston et al. 2016 on Brazil). Using a typology popularised by
a recent prominent strand of neo-institutionalism, they are “mature limited access orders”
(North et al. 2013). Limited access orders are characterised by elite rent-seeking pacts, which
serve to co-opt those with the capacity to violently challenge the status quo. As elite pacts,
they limit the access of non-elites to existing institutions, and new organisations are allowed
only to the extent that they serve to maintain or strengthen the elite pacts. Politics, and a range
of patron-client relations determine access. In mature limited access orders, the dominance of
an elite-based overall political arrangement coincides with some seemingly inclusive
institutions and norms, such as competitive elections, a market economy, functioning legal
systems and relatively free media. Overall, and due to the specific ways in which some
seemingly inclusive institutions operate, they continue to marginalise sizeable sections of
their populations. In South Africa, despite the exemplary liberal democratic credentials of its
1996 Constitution, an strong independent media and legal system, and a diversified market
economy, social and labour-market institutions conspire to exclude systematically as many as
a quarter to a third of the population from the material and psychological benefits enjoyed by
the more fortunate.
This chapter argued that the exclusivist credentials of post-apartheid South Africa have
become more evident in recent years, and that this trend has largely coincided with South
Africa’s membership of the BRICS group since 2010. It also coincides with a “sovereignist”
turn in South African foreign political and economic relations in which important dimensions
of the global liberal order are challenged in favour of an emphasis on national development
priorities and resistance to some liberal cosmopolitan values and practices. I deliberately used
the term “coincide” to link these domestic and foreign policy trends to avoid assuming
causality while the mutual influences of events and trends are diffused, dispersed, and subject
31
to feedback loops. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence to sustain a coherent tale about a
country that originally set itself the goal of contributing to global change, and thus becoming
an attractive (for various reasons) partner for others who also have an interest in global
change. It then hitched its own fortunes – and specifically the fortunes of a favoured elite
around the figure of President Zuma, to those other “emerging powers”, and found itself
changed in the process. South Africa gained considerable respect in the 1990s and early 2000s
as a global mediator and champion of the cause of the developing South, although ambiguity
was not absent from that role (Jordaan 2012). By 2017, though, this respect is dissipating as it
becomes clear how the aspirations of being a regional power, combined with declining
governance standards domestically, is transforming this BRICS member. Whether this makes
South Africa less attractive as a member to the other BRICs, remains to be seen.
Want to know more?
Three recent contributions to the literature on South Africa are highly recommended. The first
is a report by the “State Capacity Research Group” under the title Betrayal of the Promise:
How South Africa is Being Stolen (Bhorat 2017). It reveals the murky world of the patron-
client network that President Zuma and his cronies have constructed in an attempt to
undermine the Constitutional state in South Africa and to redirect state capacities for their
own sectarian purposes. Mzukisi Qobo and Prince Mashele’s book The Fall of the ANC: What
Next? (Qobo and Mashele 2017) analyses the weaknesses that have beset one of Africa’s
oldest and previously most respected national liberation movements, the African National
Congress. Given the prominence of the ANC in South African politics, where it has ruled
unchallenged since 1994, the fortunes of the country are closely linked to those of this
movement/party. Current signs of a rot, spreading from the top, bode ill for the future.
32
Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass’ Policy, Politics and Poverty in South Africa (Seekings
and Nattrass 2015) is the best available account of poverty in South Africa, how policy
initiatives have aimed at dealing with it, and how the labour market, and actors in the labour
market, contribute to excluding a large part of the population from participating fully in a
modern diversified economy.
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Table 1: SOUTH AFRICA TIMELINE
1990 Release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners. 1991 Start of multi-party talks.
President De Klerk repeals remaining apartheid laws, international sanctions lifted. 1994 First democratic SA election. Nelson Mandela elected president. International sanctions lifted. SA takes seat
in UN General Assembly. Launch of the Reconstruction and Development (RDP) economic programme.
1996 Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins hearings on human rights crimes committed by former government and liberation movements during apartheid era. Parliament adopts new constitution. Adoption of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macro-economic strategy.
1998 SA hosts Non-Aligned Movement Summit. 1999 General elections. Thabo Mbeki becomes 2nd President of post-apartheid SA, after Mandela declined to
stand for a 2nd term. SA joins G-20 as a founding member. SA hosts Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
2000 SA hosts UN AIDS Conference. 2001 SA hosts UN World Conference Against Racism.
New Partnership for Africa’s Development launched and accepted by the African Union. 2002 SA hosts World Summit on Sustainable Development. 2003 6 June 2003, Yashwant Sinha (External Affairs Minister of India), Celso Amorim (Foreign Minister of
Brazil) and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (Foreign Minister of SA) formalize the India Brazil SA (IBSA) Dialogue Forum by signing “Brasilia Declaration”.
2004 Ruling ANC wins landslide general election. Thabo Mbeki begins a second term as president. 2005 President Mbeki sacks his deputy, Jacob Zuma, due to charges of corruption. GEAR macro-economic
programme replaced by Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA (ASGISA). 2006 Former deputy president Jacob Zuma acquitted of rape charges, reinstated as deputy leader of ANC. 2007 Zuma elected chairman of the ANC.
SA elected for first of two terms on UN Security Council (2007-2008). SA hosts the G-20 Secretariat.
2008 President Mbeki resigns over allegations that he interfered in Zuma’s corruption case. ANC deputy leader Kgalema Motlanthe chosen by parliament as president.
2009 Jacob Zuma elected president. Economy goes into recession for first time in 17 years 2010 SA hosts the World Cup football tournament.
New Growth Path replaces ASGISA as macro-economic programme. 2010 SA invited to join BRICS group of states 2011 President Zuma attends the 3rd BRICS in Sanya, China.
COP 17 (United Nations Climate Change Conference) held in Durban. SA elected for second term on UN Security Council (2011-2012). 5th IBSA Summit hosted by SA in Durban.
2012 Police open fire on striking workers at platinum mine in Marikana, killing 34, injuring 78, and arresting 200. President Zuma re-elected as leader of the ANC. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ex Health and Foreign Affairs Minister elected as Chairperson of African Union Commission.
2013 Nelson Mandela passes away. SA hosts the 5th BRICS Summit in Durban. Government introduces a new macro-economic programme, the National Development Plan (NDP)-2030.
2014 SA’s Fifth Democratic Election. President Zuma elected for 2nd term. 2015 Government receives unwelcome international attention over allegations of bribery to disgraced
international footballing body FIFA to secure 2010 World Cup, and allowing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to visit despite International Criminal Court arrest warrant over genocide and war-crimes charge
2016 Supreme Court rules President Zuma violated the constitution by not repaying public money used to improve his private residence. SA announces intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
2017 SA revokes decision to withdraw from ICC after court declares it “unconstitutional and illegal” President Zuma dismisses widely-respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, leading to the country's credit rating being cut to “junk” status by some credit-rating agencies.
Table 2: SOUTH AFRICA - SELECTED SOCIO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS, 2008-2017
Year Real GDP
growth
Real GDP per capita
growth
Overall fiscal
balance
Current account
im-balance (% of GDP)
Inward FDI, % of GDP
Gross govern-
ment debt
Contribu-tion of manu-
facturing to GDP
Metals and ores as
percent of merchandise
exports
Contribution of services to GDP
Gini of dispo-sable
income
Unem-ployment rate (% of potential
workforce) 2008 3.2 1.8 -7.2 3.44 27.2 15.9 29.1 65.5 22.7
2009 -1.5 -2.9 -4.1 2.58 31.6 15.0 29.3 66.6 63.1 23.7
2010 3.0 1.5 -2.0 0.98 35.3 14.4 28.3 67.2 24.7
2011 3.2 1.7 -2.3 0.99 38.8 13.3 31.0 67.5 69.0 24.7
2012 2.2 0.7 -4.0 -5.0 1.17 41.0 13.1 27.7 67.9 25.0
2013 2.2 0.6 -3.9 -5.7 2.24 44.0 13.2 29.9 67.8 24.6
2014 1.5 -0.1 -3.7 -5.4 1.65 46.9 13.3 25.9 68.0 25.1
2015 1.3 -0.4 -3.9 -4.3 0.48 49.8 13.5 24.0 67.8 25.4
2016 0.1 -1.6 -3.7 -4.1 51.5 13.2 68.7 26.1
2017 1.1 -0.6 -3.6 -4.8 52.6 26.7
Note: Figures for 2017 are projections
Sources World Development Indicators 2017; IMF 2016b
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Figure 1: The Decline of Manufacturing and Unemployment in South Africa, 1990-2015
Source: World Development Indicators 2017