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South Africa finds itself in a dangerous historical moment. The world order is under threat from its own primary architect. The US wants to remain the premier global political power without taking on any of its responsibilities.
However, this dangerous moment also presents opportunities.
South Africa’s response has been one of strategic autonomy. This involves taking independent and non-aligned positions on global affairs to navigate between competing world powers.
But South African policymakers lack the political acumen and bureaucratic ability required to navigate this complex global order and exploit the new possibilities.
Strategic autonomy is not the norm in global affairs. It is rare for small countries to succeed at it without at least some costs.
Drawing from our expertise as a political scientist and an economist working on the international economy, we conclude that if South Africa is to succeed in its strategic autonomy ambitions, it must do three things.
First, its economic and foreign policy priority must be the African continent. Second, it must pursue bureaucratic excellence, especially in its diplomatic and security apparatus. Third, it must prepare for reprisals that are likely to follow its choice of an independent path to global affairs.
Strategic autonomy
A handful of countries have been able to pursue strategic autonomy in navigating the international system. They include Brazil, India and the Republic of Ireland.
These countries have four necessary assets: global economic importance, leverage, bureaucratic capability, and political will and agency manifested in foreign policy cohesiveness and agility.
India’s size – over 1.4 billion people and the fourth-largest market in the world – makes it a location of both production and consumption. This has become more important given the US and Western desire to create a counterbalance to China as a low-cost producer and a market for exports.
Brazil’s assets are its geographic size, its mid-size population (three times South Africa’s), its mineral wealth and its political importance to South America. It is also the 10th-largest economy in the world.
Ireland is a small country, but it uses its strategic location in the EU to influence global affairs.
South Africa is lacking on all these fronts. But with strategic planning and reforms and in partnership with other African countries, it is possible to enhance the country’s strategic importance to the global economy.
Where to from here?
If South Africa is to succeed as a nation, become globally relevant and have autonomy in the global economy, it must recognise its challenges, understand their drivers and address them pragmatically.
So what should it do?
First, it’s important to recognise that South Africa is a small country. Its economy is marginal to the rest of the world.
Africa now has a population of about 1.5 billion, which is likely to double by 2070 – the only part of the global economy in which demographic growth will occur. Purely in terms of population size, Africa will be more important than ever before.
This can only be a strategic lever if countries throughout the continent integrate their economies more strongly. Thus, South Africa’s economic and foreign policy should focus on Africa and on building the African Continental Free Trade Area. Without this, the country’s long-term economic development is in danger and it cannot develop the political leverage that enables independence in global affairs.
With its African partners, South Africa should be rebalancing its international trade. It should shift from being an exporter of raw materials to being a manufacturing and service economy.
Many countries all over Africa have deposits of minerals that are strategically important to the global economy, especially as the climate transition shapes relations. This must be used to build integration across the continent so that the region engages with powerful economies as a regional bloc.
Second, professional excellence must be taken seriously. South Africa’s political stewardship of the economy has been poor and driven by narrow political objectives of the ruling party-linked elite. For example, policy in the important mining sector has been chaotic, at best. It has not served as a developmental stimulant or as a political lever for strategic autonomy.
Specific to international affairs, South Africa has to professionalise the diplomatic corps. It has been significantly weakened and its professional capability eroded through political appointments, which make up the vast majority of ambassadorial deployments. There should be limits to the political appointments of ambassadors from the cohort of former ANC politicians and their family members.
In addition, South Africa should have fewer embassies, located in more strategic countries, with appropriate budgets to their job. It is embarrassing that embassies in places like London don’t have enough budget to market the country, undertake advocacy and advance the country’s national agenda.
But professional excellence needs to be extended far beyond the diplomatic corps. South Africa cannot continue to be compromised by incompetent municipal and national governance. And this is not solely the result of corruption and cadre deployment. It is also tied to a transformation agenda that eschews academic and professional excellence.
In addition, South Africa cannot pretend to be leading an independent path in global affairs without having the security apparatus that goes with such leadership. On this score, the country is sadly lacking.
Its security apparatus – the South African National Defence Force, police and intelligence service – needs attention. The defence force is poorly funded and, like the police and intelligence, largely a “social service” for former ANC operatives and combatants.
Third, South Africa needs to prepare for the reprisals that are likely to follow if it charts an independent path in global affairs, such as the response from the Trump administration to discipline South Africa for taking an autonomous position on Gaza.
This requires understanding the form that such reprisals could take and their consequences, and being prepared for them. It would require diplomatic agility to proactively seek new markets, alternative sources of investment and additional political allies.
In contrast, South Africa’s responses have largely been reactive.
Dangers as well as opportunities
Although it’s a dangerous and uncertain world, it is also full of new possibilities. A new bipolar or multipolar world could enable South Africa and Africa to play off global powers against each other, thereby maximising opportunities for national economic development and independence.
This will only happen if South Africans collectively become agents of their own change. It will require developing leverage that others take seriously, and a government and public administration that works for the people of the country. DM
First published by The Conversation.
Adam Habib is vice-chancellor of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London; Imraan Valodia is professor of economics and director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
