OPINION | SA’s foreign policy: Ideological stances, diplomatic shortfalls, and lessons missed - News24

South Africa’s diplomatic decline stems from the same root as the collapse of municipal governance, the economy-choking failings in our logistics network and the gravely inadequate education system, writes Terence Corrigan in his right of reply to Ziyad Motala.

It’s hard to know where to start in responding to Ziyad Motala’s critique of my article on South Africa’s foreign projection. Amid the tenuous assumptions, association fallacies, and misrepresentations - not to mention ascribing an entire worldview and motivations to me - I’m afraid his lengthy reply rather misses the points I was trying to make.

It’s a case of responding without engaging.

Since Professor Motala evidently failed to understand my article, let me provide some cheat notes: contrary to much of the public commentary on the issue, the impasse in US-SA relations is not solely attributable to President Donald Trump; South Africa has for years been pursuing a foreign policy that has placed it at odds with the US, and it has been doing so without the diplomatic skill to manage or contain the fallout.

No one is arguing for the dilution of South Africa’s sovereignty. That is an emotive red herring.

South Africa has the right to make whatever choices its duly elected government decides on. That South Africa and the US have differing interests is self-evident. That their positions may be in conflict is hardly surprising. Ideology and geopolitical outlook are important factors here - this is a recognition of reality, not a normative judgement. This is the invariable and inevitable condition of state-to-state relations.

The point of diplomacy is managing these conflicts as one element among several and maintaining the benefits of a relationship despite them.

This, then, was South Africa’s challenge: how to position itself as an essentially hostile power to the US (for that was how the ANC saw it) while simultaneously keeping intact the crucial economic relationship and access to development support, not least the Pepfar programme.

The South African state took a multiplicity of high-profile stances against the US, paired with even more aggressive denunciations from the ANC (constitutional strictures aside, the party has done much to erase the party-state distinction, and probably nowhere more so than in the foreign affairs realm). At times, such as the not-yet-resolved matter of renaming Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive, a measure first proposed in 2018 - so predating the current round of contretemps - this was pure bombast, explicitly intended to offend the US. This goes back a long way.

Call this “megaphone diplomacy”. This articulation, with which Professor Motala takes issue, is not mine. It’s an image used by Ambassador Rasool and by President Ramaphosa’s spokesperson.

Nothing in what Motala writes disputes this. He is robustly antagonistic to the US, and warmly supportive of the positions South Africa has adopted. If his piece was intended as a justification of South Africa’s positions, it might have some merit. But that wasn’t my point.

SA’s de facto alignments and sympathies

Nor, incidentally, did I “argue that South Africa should speak clearly and consistently about human rights abuses across the globe”. That might be ideal, but that argument would be pointless, and misunderstand South Africa’s foreign projection as it exists, and why it acts as it does. It will not pressure Cuba or China on such matters, and it would be naive to expect it.

It’s a question of South Africa’s de facto alignments and sympathies, and analysts and commentators should understand that South Africa’s claims to moral principle are selective. (To which, I have argued elsewhere, South Africa can at least offer a justification of sorts by pointing to the universality of hypocrisy.)

While Professor Motala doesn’t appear overly concerned about the consequences of all this, whether political or economic, a great many South Africans are. Even Cosatu - whose own views on global politics probably align closely with the professor’s - has been worried about the loss of US market access.

This is why it’s important to understand what has failed from South Africa’s side. It developed very little in the way of countervailing vectors of influence. That, by the way, was why I mentioned the Lady R affair.

Contrary to Professor Motala’s allusions, I made no comment supporting the allegations of arms being loaded on the vessel. (Perhaps he only skim-read my piece and was riffing on a keyword; who knows?) What I did say was that when the allegations were being made, the inadequacies of the South African diplomatic presence in Washington were laid bare: a politically appointed ambassador who had been on long-term sick leave, and a very scant presence of the embassy on circuits where influence is to be generated.

It’s for times and instances like this that a well-functioning diplomatic service is needed. Likewise, I made no judgement on the draft legislation at the time demanding that the US reexamine its relationship with South Africa, except to say that this was a very grave development, which both exposed the state of South African diplomacy (how had it come to this…) and its ongoing weaknesses, since little enough was done to try to rescue things at that stage.

Nor is this something unique to South Africa’s relationship with the US, as official evaluations and recent media reports on diplomatic missions elsewhere have noted.

SA’s diplomatic decline

South Africa’s diplomatic decline stems from the same root as the collapse of municipal governance, the economy-choking failings in our logistics network, and the gravely inadequate education system. It’s expressed for all of us in a growth rate that scrapes by at around 1% a year, and a fixed investment rate of around 15% of GDP - less than half of what its middle-income peers manage.

Predictably, Professor Motala also attacks the Institute of Race Relations. Well, he’s not the first and won’t be the last. Our position on South Africa’s malaise is well known and our proposed solutions have been extensively explained.

We have pushed for solutions based on non-racialism, economic growth, freedom and prosperity. We need not expand on this here, save to comment that we do indeed seek extensive policy reorientations. The current direction has, after all, hardly been a winner, either at home or abroad.

Terence Corrigan is projects and publications manager at the Institute of Race Relations.

https://www.news24.com/opinions/columnists/opinion-sas-foreign-policy-ideological-stances-diplomatic-shortfalls-and-lessons-missed-20250522-0560