Africa's Lost Leader: South Africa's Continental Role Since Apartheid by James Hamill

Author:James Hamill [Hamill, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Africa, South, General, Republic of South Africa
ISBN: 9780429260933
Google: KbCvwgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 39230308
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

A diminished South African role?

There were signs that South Africa would take on a more circumspect role in African development even before the country’s August 2016 municipal elections; the ANC’s poor results in the contest will lend further impetus to this shift. The trend of declining engagement is evident in two principal areas: post-conflict reconstruction and development (PCRD), and financial commitment to the SACU.

South Africa is actively involved in conflict prevention, peacekeeping and PCRD.81 As Savo Heleta argues, the purpose of PCRD is ‘to create a stable environment, consolidate lasting peace and prevent the return of violent conflict in the future’,82 a process that he recognises is likely to be ‘intricate and long’.83 Much of South Africa’s PCRD activity in African states recovering from protracted periods of violence and social breakdown – such as South Sudan – has involved not direct payments but attempts to build institutions, strengthen governance mechanisms, provide technical assistance, organise elections and train personnel, such as civil servants.84 This activity involves a range of government departments, as well as state-owned enterprises and state agencies such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Industrial Development Corporation, the Independent Electoral Commission and the Human Sciences Research Council. (Pretoria sometimes involves the defence department in these undertakings, a practice that Heleta views as a dangerous blurring of the demarcation line between military activity and developmental work.)85

This array of projects across different departments and agencies is difficult to coordinate, making for incoherent policy and challenges in accurately measuring PCRD expenditure. The government could mitigate these problems by operationalising the South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA), bringing all related activities under the remit of one institution. Disbursements to the continent via the African Renaissance Fund – through which many of South Africa’s PCRD initiatives are funded (alongside a variety of other measures such as conflict prevention and emergency relief programmes), and which SADPA will eventually replace – totalled R199m (US$13.8m) in 2016, down from R208m (US$14.5m) the previous year.86

However, South Africa’s capacity to encourage best practice in these areas is limited by neo-patrimonial leadership in many African states. These states are prepared to observe some of the rituals, procedures and outward forms of good governance, so long as they do not encroach upon the real centres of power and the parallel structures that preserve the flow of resources between patron and client. South Africa’s record of confronting such systems has been unimpressive and – in line with Pretoria’s shift away from promoting democracy and human rights abroad (see Chapter One) – has been characterised by denial, obfuscation and, at times, ignorance.

This lacklustre approach to the continent appears to reflect a lack of good governance in South Africa itself, under Zuma’s incompetent and directionless administration. Systemic corruption undermines the state’s capacity to act by diverting funds intended for crucial domestic and foreign projects into the hands of predatory elites. Graft further increases the strain placed on PCRD resources by the government’s need to refocus on domestic priorities. For example, at the

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