Weakening Pillars of the New South Africa

The Decaying Pillars of Post-Apartheid South Africa

The imbroglio over the Dalai Lama’s visa application has added another blemish on South Africa’s foreign policy, underscoring the heavy price the country is paying for its relationship with China. What we have witnessed in the past week are signs of regressive evolution of South Africa’s foreign policy, the loss of its independence, and of the crumbling pillars of the country’s commitment to progressive values under Jacob Zuma’s presidency.

Three years ago, before President Zuma ascended to power, it was unthinkable that South Africa’s foreign policy would ever be dictated upon by another country or that government would easily sell the country’s soul in exchange for maintaining a commercial relationship with a country that suffers democratic deficiencies and with lower human rights standards such as China.

When South Africa assiduously lobbied and begged to be allowed into the BRIC club that includes Brazil, Russia, India and China, this was a sign that South Africa’s foreign policy was entering a prolonged crisis of confidence. Opportunistically, China took up South Africa’s cause and ensured the latter’s acceptance into this elite club of economically influential emerging economies. It is partly this debt that South Africa is repaying today with its values.

As we now know, on the same week that Dalai Lama cancelled his trip to South Africa, the leadership of the African National Congress was on a pilgrimage to Beijing to genuflect before the Chinese Communist Party and take some lessons. South Africa’s political elite and bureaucrats have excessive fear of China, bordering on the irrational, and regard themselves as minions in the sight of the mighty Chinese.  

Other developing countries such as Brazil who possess a more confident and independent foreign policy have firmly stood up to China where they hold a differing perspective on a foreign policy or trade issue. In the past year, Brazil confronted China for manipulating its currency as a strategy the latter uses to artificially bolster its exports of manufactured goods to the detriment of other middle-income countries’ export sectors. More recently, Brazil has taken a hard-line stance in its trade relations and slapped import tariffs on China’s steel in order to protect its own domestic steel sector and create more jobs.

Unlike the South African government, Brazil understands its strategic interests and chooses to protect its industries and workers over maintaining a relationship with China at all costs. An obsequious foreign policy towards China will not necessarily help South Africa to power its economy and create more jobs.

More menacing, such a relationship could serve to corrode the values upon which the new South Africa is founded. In a sense, the ugly developments around the Dalai Lama offer us a mirror to assess our foreign policy and the strength of our values as a nation. The Dalai Lama, who is the Tibetan spiritual leader, poses no threat to South Africa.

Since the time he fled to exile in India along with some 80 000 Tibetans in March 1959, the Dalai Lama has been a voice of reason and vocal in criticising China for its repression and human rights failings. His persistent efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. In 2007, the US government granted him the Highest Civilian Order to recognise his positive contribution to humanity.

South Africa had no reason to fear China over the Dalai Lama visa issue since, in any case, it is China that has a deep yearning for credibility and has the burden to prove to the rest of the world that there is nothing to be feared in its so-called peaceful rise. China has a weak soft-power in the form of attractive values and ideas that others can easily embrace, and may struggle to build this if it continues to assert its interests through intimidation.

If indeed China is holding South Africa by the strings, as it seems to be the case, this surely casts a terrifying spectre of foreign occupation whose influence - spoken or unspoken - is more decisive than the weight of opinion of South Africans; and has a stronger force than the moral foundations of the South African society as expressed in its liberal Constitution.

This kind of behaviour can achieve just the opposite: it reveals an image of a country that is deeply insecure and ready to use its sharp claws – its financial might - to intimidate those who don’t conform to its political wishes. It is China’s image that has been sternly tested and came out badly disfigured in the visa debacle. China will have to be careful not to overplay its hand on South Africa’s foreign policy as this could risk provoking anti-Chinese sentiments.

China should also be aware that the current crop of ANC elites running South Africa today may not be here tomorrow, as most of them are aging and nearing the end of their political careers. For China to cultivate a more benign image it would need to comport itself in non-threatening ways and be more sensitive to other countries’ values, especially commitment to freedom, even if it does not share such values. These are issues China will have to deal with internally, as it navigates its ‘peaceful rise’. It is shameful, however, for the South African government to sell the country’s values on the cheap.

What this recent Dalai Lama saga has also revealed is that Jacob Zuma’s presidency is undermining South Africa’s dignity and debasing its intellectual and moral standing on the global stage. The conduct of our foreign policy no longer inspires a sense of pride, but only elicits squirms and crossing of fingers that another blunder may be lurking on the horizon.

Other African countries that might be looking up to South Africa for leadership must surely be dismayed by South Africa’s kow-towing to China. Under successive presidencies of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, South Africa commanded respect for the independence of its foreign policy, the clarity and boldness of its ideas, and for its strong values framework. It acted like a real African giant. This is now threadbare.

The regressive shift in South Africa’s foreign policy and the corruption of the country’s core values sounds the note of a prelude to a dirge. This brings to mind Edmund Burke’s reflection on the monstrous progeny of the French Revolution in his Letters on a Regicide Peace: “out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappaled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist.’

Yet, still, the biggest danger may not be that the ruling party is no longer unchecked by remorse, has lost all human capacity to be ashamed, and is impervious to public opinion. But that we may find ourselves sinking into deeper levels of despair and indifference as coping mechanisms, and thus fail to take action.

The ill-treatment of the Dalai Lama is consistent with other dangerous signs on the wall that are screaming for our attention that a different South Africa we can no longer recognise may already be under construction in the shape of what Burke referred to as an ‘…unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise’.

Dr Mzukisi Qobo is senior lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. He is a public speaker and political risk analyst; and a member of the Midrand Group.