La Geopolítica de Sudáfrica.

Sudáfrica ha sido siempre un país muy interesante para la Argentina. Su ubicación geográfica lo proyecta como un actor muy importante en el Atlántico Sur, y en consecuencia, sobre Malvinas y la Antártida. Además, la historia sudafricana presenta varios cruces con los intereses británicos en la zona. Sin olvidarnos que su difícil proceso de integración política y social presenta interesantes ejemplos.

Assessing South Africa in All Its Dimensions

By James Hamill

Ubicación geográfica relativa de
Sudáfrica.

In 1980, the controversial U.S. diplomat for Africa, Chester Crocker, memorably described South Africa as a "magnet for one-dimensional minds." The accuracy of that assertion has been confirmed over the course of the post-1994 democratic era, during which mood swings among both the commentariat and the wider populace have caused South Africa to be viewed from several, radically contrasting, but ultimately one-dimensional perspectives.

Between 1994 and 1999, under the presidency of Nelson Mandela, South Africa was routinely described as a "miracle," a country that had somehow managed to navigate the treacherous waters of the transition from apartheid, while putting in place the foundations for a successful multiracial democracy. Because of this, South Africa was hailed as a model for the resolution of conflicts in other societies deeply divided along racial, ethnic or religious fault lines.


By the turn of the century, however, the idea of South Africa as a "universal metaphor," as Mark Gevisser phrased it, had been replaced by a growing sense of disillusionment. The mystique surrounding the new South Africa had begun to fade as the country entered a more recognizable political era -- one of shabby compromises, thwarted ambition and more fallible leadership. In this less inspirational environment, South Africa gradually became "just another country."

There would be a further change of mood in the first decade of the new century, with bleak commentaries on the country's condition becoming commonplace, first under former President Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008) and, more recently, under his successor, President Jacob Zuma. South Africa was increasingly characterized as a country on a downward trajectory toward inevitable failure, the familiar post-colonial African narrative.

In fact, all of these images are rather crude and simplistic, failing to capture either the complexity or the nuances of South Africa's post-apartheid political economy. That very complexity should preclude narratives of inexorable decline or of untrammeled progress. The more mundane South African reality provides a picture of genuine achievement -- in some respects groundbreaking, in other respects partial -- interspersed with failures ranging from the qualified to the unambiguous. Identifying those successes and failures helps bring into focus South Africa's principal challenges 15 years into the democratic era in general, and seven months into the presidency of Jacob Zuma in particular.

Successes, Part 1: Creating a Democratic Infrastructure

It is relatively easy, given their familiarity, to take the new South Africa's successes for granted. But that would be a major error, as many of those achievements were far from foregone conclusions. In the mid- to late-1980s, few countries were discussed with such a deep sense of foreboding as South Africa. There was good reason, too, given the insurrection in the black townships and the subsequent State of Emergency that spawned a culture of lawlessness within the security forces. The country's international isolation was symbolized by the international community's imposition of a range of diplomatic, military and economic sanctions.

The academic literature of the period struck a suitably apocalyptic tone. Titles such as the Rockefeller Commission's "Time Running Out" or John Brewer's 1988 edited volume, "Can South Africa Survive? Five Minutes to Midnight," perfectly captured the prevailing mood. Yet just over one year later, South Africa had definitively turned its back on apartheid. And while the subsequent negotiated transition -- which nonetheless cost 15,000 lives -- was neither bloodless nor peaceful, it fell mercifully short of the carnage many had predicted.

This was a tribute to the maturity of leadership on both sides -- Nelson Mandela for the African National Congress (ANC), and F.W. de Klerk for the National Party -- which resulted in the formation of a vital center in South African politics in 1993-94 that was able to face down rejectionist elements determined to destroy the transition.

Moreover, those negotiations would put in place the constitutional and democratic infrastructure that has served the country well since 1994, creating a nation in which the constitution, and not the government or the ruling party, is sovereign. The final constitution of 1996 is among the most progressive in the world in enshrining the liberties of the citizen, as well as in safeguarding an independent judiciary and a free media. While the South African Broadcasting Corporation has an ingrained culture of servility towards the ruling party, the South African press is by any measure the most vibrant on the African continent, with a marked iconoclastic attitude toward government. Although they are not dogmatically anti-government, the op-ed pages of the country's major newspapers -- the Mail and Guardian, Business Day, the Star, Cape Times and Sunday Times -- are laced with withering critiques of government performance.

Since 1994, democratic government has been put in place at the national, provincial and local levels, and there have been four successful, and indisputably free and fair, elections at the national and provincial levels that should serve as a model for the continent. In addition, there have been three sets of municipal elections in 1995, 2000, and 2006. The country also has a thriving civil society with a diverse array of non-governmental organizations and interest groups. Autonomous from and often antagonistic toward the government, they make full use of the democratic space available to them. For confirmation, one need only consider how successful the Treatment Action Campaign has been throughout the past decade in opposing the government, via the judicial process and in the court of public opinion, on the HIV/AIDS issue.

Perhaps most significantly, because it was a precondition for progress in all other areas, the political violence that so disfigured South Africa during the post-1990 transition is no longer a feature of the country's political life. From the scarcely believable figure of 366 deaths per month in 1993, political violence has declined to such a degree that just one politically motivated death on election day in 2009 was deemed worthy of comment. Progress indeed.

Successes, Part 2: Leadership Transitions

The crisis of legitimacy around African leadership has become one of the most depressingly familiar features of the continent's post-independence political landscape. This has taken various forms, but most common have been the personalized systems of rule in which a supposedly benign, "father of the nation"-style patriarchy rapidly descends into a corrupt and seemingly indefinite despotism -- as in the case of Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Bongo (Gabon), and Gadhafi (Libya). It has also become the norm for leadership and elite transitions to be achieved only through violent rebellion or coup d'etat, with an overall paucity of constitutional transfers of power in Africa.

Again, South Africa has set a higher standard in this area. It has had four presidents in the post-apartheid era, with each coming to power and -- more importantly -- three leaving power through orderly constitutional processes. Nelson Mandela signaled in advance that he would serve only one presidential term, in itself a useful lesson for a continent where gerontocracies have long since overstayed their welcome. Mandela's intentions triggered some unease in the country, as there was a perception between 1994 and 1997 that the stability of the new South Africa was overly dependent upon the Mandela phenomenon. The WHAM question -- "What Happens after Mandela?" -- was of particular concern to the financial markets.

The ANC handled this dilemma with real finesse, however. Between 1994 and 1999, increasing power was devolved to Thabo Mbeki as deputy president, until he essentially became a de facto prime minister running the affairs of government, while Mandela focused upon his role as head of state and national unifier. As a confidence-building measure, this helped familiarize the country with Mbeki's leadership and ensure a gradual Mandela withdrawal, rather than a traumatic rupture. Consequently, by 1999, a near-seamless transition had been achieved.

Mbeki's own presidency would end in more turbulent fashion when he was removed by his own party in September 2008 after nine years in office, the culmination of a protracted period of ANC internecine strife between its Mbeki and Zuma camps. Nonetheless, while the wisdom of Mbeki's 2008 removal may certainly be questioned, its constitutionality was not in doubt. Mbeki was no longer able to command the support of his own party, and rather than face inevitable defeat in a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly -- the only body constitutionally empowered to remove him -- he chose to resign.

This episode was also revealing, in that both press and academic commentaries on Mbeki's leadership had long stressed his "authoritarian" leadership style. Mbeki was certainly intolerant of -- even paranoid about -- dissent. He packed his cabinet with reliable loyalists and centralized power within his own office to an unhealthy degree. However, one might reasonably wonder what kind of authoritarian leader accepts first being removed as the leader of his party in a democratic vote without complaint, before resigning the presidency itself nine months later without even a token display of resistance. If this is authoritarianism, then it is a version largely unknown to the rest of the continent, where few sitting presidents have been democratically removed from both party and state positions over the last two decades.

The South African system worked, with Mbeki being replaced by Kgalema Motlanthe as interim president for eight months until Jacob Zuma's accession to the presidency in May 2009, following the April general election.

Mixed Results

In a range of other areas in South Africa, there are mixed results to report after 15 years of democratic governance.

Economic and social deficits

The country has made some progress in tackling the onerous social and economic deficits which are the legacy of apartheid. Since 1994, the ANC government has presided over the construction of 2.7 million houses -- if relatively basic ones -- as part of its long-term project to address the apartheid housing backlog and remove people from the destitution of informal settlements. The government has also been successful in bringing electricity and clean drinking water to many South African communities. By 2006, 80 percent of households were connected to the electricity grid, compared to less than 40 percent in 1994. And by 2007, 71 percent of households had access to clean drinking water, due to 1,700 people per day gaining access since 1994.

This demonstrable progress has helped create, for its beneficiaries, the much-promised "better life for all." But the ongoing service delivery protests around the country in the last two years demonstrate that the patience of those communities where services have not been delivered -- or where they are considered inadequate -- is extremely limited.

Next Page: Opening the economy to globalization . . .



The ANC government has also overseen a fraught process of opening up the economy to globalization, and has been widely praised for stabilizing the economy, for controlling fiscal deficits, and for presiding over South Africa's longest period of sustained growth, between 2000 and 2008, since 1945.

That said, South Africa remains the most unequal society in the world, and while the distribution of income and life opportunities remains racially skewed, it is no longer accurate to characterize this as a purely black-white dichotomy. The rise of a black middle class has opened up serious levels of intra-black inequality, and by 2005, the numbers of South Africans living in absolute poverty (less than $1 per day) had actually increased to 4.2 million from 1.9 million in 1996. (Although the fact that 12 million people are now in receipt of welfare grants has subsequently helped to alleviate that situation.)

In addition, the economic growth mentioned above has failed to translate into effective job creation, with unemployment standing officially at 23.5 percent of the workforce in 2009. In reality, it is considerably higher, and most commentators estimate that at least one third of the workforce is unemployed, with the figure rising to well over 50 percent in many black communities. A full 39 percent of South Africans aged 18-30 are unemployed, with 4 out of every 5 of those having never worked -- an unsustainable figure and a ticking social and political time bomb for the country.

National reconciliation

Building an inclusive South African identity on the rubble of apartheid was the central theme of Nelson Mandela's presidency, a task that entailed reaching out beyond his own core constituency to reassure others -- often historical enemies -- of their place in the new South Africa. Thus, South Africa as a "rainbow nation" became the country's defining image from the mid- to late-1990s.

For Thabo Mbeki, however, the rainbow nation imagery had become a dangerous exercise in self-deception, and his presidency, beginning in 1999, struck a less emollient tone. He repeatedly emphasized that the only credible route to racial harmony and genuine reconciliation lay through a transformation of the conditions of the historically disadvantaged black majority, and that this was a cause in which the historically advantaged would be expected to make sacrifices. The more "Africanist" thrust of Mbeki's politics and the more abrasive racial discourse that accompanied it was viewed as a threatening, even sinister, development by minorities. It triggered fears of Zimbabwe-style racial scapegoating, but Mbeki felt it was necessary to reacquaint white South Africans with the underlying realities and inequalities of the country in which they lived.

Thus the racial temperature rose throughout the Mbeki era, with the president himself developing an unfortunate tendency to view every issue through the prism of race and to deploy the accusation of "racism" far too permissively as a means of stifling and delegitimizing robust criticism. Inter-racial healing in South Africa remains a long-term challenge, but in 2009, Zuma inherited a country much less at ease with itself on this question than it was during the halcyon days of the mid-1990s.

The international record

South Africa's global standing was massively enhanced by the ending of apartheid, the negotiated settlement, the creation of democratic structures and by the generosity of spirit of its first president. The country was rehabilitated, and as the doors to a range of international organizations were thrown open, South Africa embraced multilateralism enthusiastically. Mandela also made it clear that human rights would be the "light that guides our foreign policy," and there was an expectation that Pretoria would lead campaigns for democracy and human rights in both Africa and the southern African sub-region.

Mbeki inherited that approach and initially appeared to build upon it with his vision of an "African renaissance," as well as through his pivotal role in creating the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) with the West, in which democracy, human rights and good governance were integral elements. Over time, however, that idealism dissipated, to be replaced by a more cynical realpolitik.

Some of this was inevitable. Foreign policy, for any democratic state, will always involve a trade-off between values and interests, and a policy driven exclusively by human rights considerations was hardly viable given South Africa's wide commercial and geopolitical interests. However, foreign policy under Mbeki eventually lost any anchorage in a moral perspective, and instead steadily gravitated towards a form of multilateralism that prioritized the interests of disreputable African regimes, such as Zimbabwe and Sudan, over the rights of African peoples. Thus the tired old dogmas of sovereignty and non-interference -- always a blank check for abusers such as Robert Mugabe and Omar Al-Bashir -- were given precedence over the principles of good governance, democracy and human rights that Mbeki had previously embraced.

Mbeki sought to flaunt South Africa's "African credentials," but his "Africanism" was of a narrow and reactionary kind, one based on clichéd anti-Western rhetoric and a misplaced solidarity with precisely the type of leadership that had failed the continent. This was epitomized by his consistent failure to condemn Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe and by votes in the U.N. Security Council to protect Sudan and Zimbabwe despite those states' violation of every principle of both the "African renaissance" and NEPAD, a posture destructive of South Africa's own best interests. It will now fall to Jacob Zuma to construct a foreign policy that can achieve a better balance between interests and values while, hopefully, rediscovering South Africa's moral compass.

The Post-1994 Failures

There have, of course, been a number of important failures, some with disastrous consequences. The country's education sector continues to languish, despite swallowing up significant resources. As long as this persists, it will constitute a serious drag on economic development and will invalidate any ambition South Africa has of emulating the Asian "tiger" economies.

Nor has the government been able to satisfactorily address South Africa's appalling levels of crime, with the resulting image of South Africa as a crime-infested state becoming increasingly entrenched in the global consciousness and eclipsing more positive perceptions. The country continues to have the dubious "distinction" of being a global leader for murders, carjackings, burglaries, rapes and sexual violence. This has a generally corrosive effect on society, undermining public confidence in law enforcement and the criminal justice system, and giving rise (for those who can afford it) to a private security sector and (for those who cannot) to vigilantism. It also deters foreign businesses from locating in South Africa, and is normally cited as one of the principal reasons for -- largely white -- emigration from the country. Zuma has listed this as one of his five major priorities, and it is of particular concern given that a showpiece global event, the soccer World Cup, will be held in South Africa in June 2010.

The country's most serious failure, however, has been its long and inglorious chapter of denialism about the causes and scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. There are now 5.5 million South Africans living with HIV, or 18.8 percent of the adult population. The country has the highest number of cases in the world, and despite having less than 1 percent of the world's population, has over 17 percent of the world's HIV-positive cases.

It would be inaccurate to attribute this disaster exclusively to Thabo Mbeki. After all, Nelson Mandela has conceded that his presidency paid insufficient attention to the AIDS crisis, and it was only on leaving the presidency that Mandela became such a vigorous AIDS campaigner.

Mbeki, however, must accept the bulk of responsibility for his perverse refusal to embrace the orthodox science on the pandemic, his questioning of the statistics on AIDS-related deaths, and his resistance to making anti-retroviral drugs widely available -- a position that a November 2008 Harvard research report estimated cost 333,000 lives between 2000 and 2005. While presidents in other states led from the front, in South Africa, the president abdicated responsibility and left others -- churches, labor unions, and activist groups -- to fill the leadership vacuum. This culpability for the gravest crisis facing the country has left an indelible stain on Mbeki's reputation, and represents the most lasting impression from a generally squandered presidency.

Here again, Zuma -- who has his own dubious past to live down on HIV/AIDS -- has sought to make a definitive break with the Mbeki era by embracing the orthodox science, expanding the provision of anti-retroviral drugs and speaking openly about the crisis. To paraphrase Gerald Ford in the aftermath of Watergate, South Africa's long national nightmare of AIDS denialism is over.

Dilemmas and Challenges

South Africa is confronted by multiple problems: unemployment, crime, poverty, inequality, inadequate housing, an underperforming educational sector, and HIV/AIDS. Addressing them successfully will require leadership of a very high order indeed. It is impossible to pass judgment on the Zuma presidency at this early stage, but it is of concern that, so far, Zuma appears to have no compelling vision for the country or any real intellectual substance on matters of policy.

The ANC's overwhelming political dominance also gives cause for concern, given the tendency of dominant parties to erode the boundaries between party and state, their greater propensity toward corruption, and their creeping intolerance of opposition -- a particular problem for dominant parties rooted in a liberation tradition. That said, South Africa is not Zimbabwe. It has many residual democratic strengths to draw upon, and referring to the ANC's "dominance" suggests a degree of control that is largely mythical, given the constraints within which the party must work, both locally and globally.

Overall, the ANC's post-1994 record is like the "curate's egg" -- good in parts -- and while South Africa has attracted some extravagant praise and scathing criticism since 1994, it is perhaps the more pragmatic and measured words of former President F.W. de Klerk that best capture the country's current condition. In assessing Zuma's first 100 days, de Klerk noted, "So, we find ourselves after 15 years of constitutional democracy balanced between justifiable pride over our significant achievements and deep concern over our unresolved problems."

In short, South Africa is neither a miracle nor disaster, but a dynamic, infuriating and engaging work in progress.

James Hamill has been a lecturer in the Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Leicester, U.K. since 1991. He has a long-standing research interest in South African politics, particularly in the country's post-apartheid development, and is a frequent visitor to the country. He has published articles on South Africa in "International Relations," "Diplomacy & Statecraft," "The World Today," "Contemporary Review," and "The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs." He is currently working with his colleague John Hoffman on a book for Palgrave Macmillan on South Africa's policy of "quiet diplomacy" toward the post-2000 crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe.