SA’s foreign policy described as ‘bizarre’

ANT KATZ

J Peter Pham of the Atlantic Council Africa Centre in Washington DC, blogging on the website AllAfrica.com, has much to say about the forthcoming ANC national general council meeting under the headline: AFRICA: SOUTH AFRICA’S BIZARRE WORLD FOREIGN POLICY

He writes: Last year, when it was first reported that South Africa’s ruling liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), would receive funding from the Chinese Communist Party for its new Policy School and Political Institute in Venterskroon, I and several other scholars – including Patrick Heller of Brown University and retired Ambassador David Shinn of George Washington University – drew more than a bit of criticism over our concerns that, as I told Time magazine: “Chinese money in significant amounts and influence could tip the ANC in the wrong direction.” As it turns out, it took less than a year for proof to emerge of just how much the foreign policy orientations of Africa’s second-largest economy have shifted.

The ANC is scheduled to convene its mid-term National General Council (NGC) in early October. The NGC is the ANC’s highest policymaking body in between the quinqennial meetings of its national conference, empowered by the group’s constitution “to ratify, alter or rescind any decision taken by any of the constituent bodies, units or officials of the ANC” as well as evaluate the performance of members of its National Executive Committee.

Ahead of the NGC meeting, various subcommittees of the National Executive body have released documents which will form the basis of the upcoming deliberations. I am grateful to my friend Frans Cronje, president of the South African Institute of Race Relations, one of that country’s oldest independent liberal research organisations, for calling my attention to the foreign policy document published last week.

CLICK FOR FDF OF THIS WEEK’S ANC NGC DISCUSSION DOCUMENT

The international relations text, entitled “A Better Africa in a Better and Just World”, was drawn up by a panel chaired by Deputy Minister in the Presidency Obed Bapela that included such foreign policy heavyweights as South African President Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife, African Union Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma; South African Minister of International Relations and Co-operation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane; Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies; former Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency Billy Masetlha; former National Commission of Police Bhekokwakhe “Bheki” Cele; and former Deputy Ministers for International Relations and Co-operation her deputies, Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim and Susan van der Merwe – in short, some of the very individuals who are responsible for the day-to-day management of the country’s foreign relations. Click to also read on Jewish Report Online:

And how do these worthies view the world and their country’s place in it?

First, far from distancing itself from the Marxist-Leninist wreckage of the last century, the South African leadership reaffirms its ideological roots: “The ANC is a revolutionary national liberation movement which is an integral part of the international revolutionary movement to liberate humanity from the bondage of imperialism and neocolonialism.”

The text even goes so far as to quote the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin: “This theoretical formulation is affirmed by Vladimir Lenin when he maintains that, ‘revolutionary scientific theory is the weapon to make us judge and define the methods of struggle correctly. It is a weapon that helps us analyse and understand correctly the cause of development of human society at every moment, to analyse and understand correctly every turning point of society and to carry out the revolutionary transformation of society’.”