By Francis Kornegay
South Africa and the African Union (AU) have ended up internationally isolated on the issue of a post-Gaddafi Libya. This predicament was accentuated by Russia’s recognition of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) on the eve of the Paris “Friends of Libya” summit at the beginning of September. China as well as Russia were present at this new Libyan creation of great and emerging powers, including the Arab League, but boycotted by South Africa and the AU.
The ramifications of this mutual alienation between Libya’s new rulers and the AU, led by South Africa, could be far-reaching. It could include Libya’s exit from the AU along with Morocco and tensions between them both and Algeria (which was also present in Paris).
This could further complicate North Africa’s relationship with the rest of the continent and the European Union’s bifurcated policy toward Africa: the Maghreb on the one hand via the EU-Mediterranean Partnership; sub-Saharan Africa on the other through the asymmetrical “EU-Africa Strategic Partnership”. Indeed, Africa’s relations with the West generally may stand in the balance, and this from a country that fashioned itself as Africa’s emerging power representative in the Brics club of Brazil, Russia, India and China. In this regard, the recent actions by Moscow and Beijing underline what Brics is not: an emerging powers political alliance.
At a time when the department of international relations and cooperation is vetting its foreign policy white paper, the Libya policy controversy reveals a tortured set of contradictions. Our diplomacy appears a complete muddle on the norms and values front and how normative considerations should mutually inform national interests in pragmatically balancing the country’s alignments and strategic priorities.
Most other Brics, China and Russia in particular, pursue a normatively neutral but pragmatic “non-interference” approach to crises such as Libya. Yet Pretoria, has never been comfortable in departing from the other Brics in voting for UN Resolution 1973 and the consequent demise of Muammar Gaddafi. Perhaps there may have been a notion of Brics as anti-West instead of pro-emerging powers and global South with Pretoria having to “get on side”.
Never mind the fact that we were in “African unity” with Nigeria and Gabon on 1973; or that abstentions by Moscow and Beijing were tacitly votes favouring the P3 – the US, UK and France – in effecting a “no-fly zone” military intervention.
Pretoria has seemed acutely ambivalent about its posture in relation to other Brics in the UN Security Council. This seems less about a considered policy approach to issues coming before the council; more a kneejerk string of serial reactions against anything emerging from the P3 whether these relate to Libya or, more recently, Syria. The point concerns posture rather than how often South Africa votes with the P3.
Not that the P3 should serve as benchmarks for South Africa’s positions. P3 hypocrisies, inconsistencies and contradictions leave them with little claim to the moral high ground. But leaving out the West, there are other non-Western reference points: Turkey, Egypt and the Arab League for example.
In the case of Syria, even Iran has begun pressing the Bashar al-Assad regime to cease its violent crackdown on protestors and to begin reforms. Pretoria has considerably more leeway in navigating this and other issues in conveying genuine foreign policy independence than it seems to appreciate. Yet, on Libya, it has manoeuvred itself and the AU into an irrelevantly negative cul-de-sac replete with divisions on the continent on how the Libyan NTC should be engaged.
Instead of the AU consultation on Libya chaired by President Jacob Zuma refusing to recognise the NTC, the outcome could have provided more flexibility. It could have offered provisional recognition as an outreach to the NTC. Communication could have productively gotten under way, at the very least a “dialogue partnership” that defused tensions.
By provisionally recognising the NTC, the AU would have positioned itself to work with the Arab League and other actors on whatever post-conflict plan for Libya the UN and the “Friends of Libya” come up with. However such a plan unfolds, the NTC has, from the very beginning stipulated that under no circumstances would they countenance foreign boots on the ground in Libya, Nato assistance notwithstanding.
Nevertheless, as Gaddafi moved to crush Libyan people power, the leaders of the anti-Gaddafi insurgency asked for the external military assistance that was forthcoming. Nato powers had, in any case, ruled out troop deployments, conspiracy suspicions notwithstanding. The NTC has ruled out any kind of peacekeeping presence unless from Arab League and/or Islamic states. And this as a last resort.
But this selective anti-imperialism is not good enough for South Africa and the AU. Instead, South African policy seems to be informed purely in reaction to whatever Nato does, Nato being a perfect anti-Western whipping-boy for ignoring all other considerations in the complex Libyan conundrum. In this thinking, Nato deposed Gaddafi, not the rebels. The NTC equals “Nato rebels”.
Ironically, many Western observers see Libya as Nato’s “last hurrah”, giving it little prospect of spear-heading any future out of area interventions. But this Western side of the Nato story never registers in Pretoria’s or any other African calculus. Yet the AU is dependent on the West in constructing its Stand By Force system, Africom assistance included.
Clearly there is need for a more robust security dialogue within the EU-Africa Strategic Partnership about Western military interventions in Africa under whatever guise. It will be interesting to see how proactive Pretoria and the AU are on this in the aftermath of Libya.
To be sure, a full embrace of the NTC by the AU really isn’t prudent pending greater clarity on the interim government the NTC will set up and the consolidation of its confederated insurgent army. Indeed, a very real danger is a Mogadishu-type scenario unfolding as rival anti-Gaddafi militias vie for control of Tripoli and/or other regions and urban centres.
In this sense the AU call for an “inclusive government” is on the mark. But the seemingly hostile manner in which this has been conveyed along with implications that the NTC must accommodate Gaddafi loyalists tramples on the case for “inclusiveness”. We’ve seen the fig-leaf for impunity that “inclusiveness” translates into in Zimbabwe. Pretoria and the AU cannot continue putting forth “one size fits all” national unity governments as the “African solution to African problems”.
The “concerned” (or confused?) African intellectuals, with their elusive “open letter”, have been of little help in this regard with their re-treaded cold war anti-imperialist paranoia, totally ignoring the popular origins of the Libyan insurgency. Tone-deaf do they seem to the regional transnational democratic, youth-led, social media-driven momentum for change in the Arab world in which the Libyan uprising is nested.
Instead, these “thought leaders” have hitched their conservatism to the tired state-centric elite sovereignty agenda of an AU still reflecting the protectionist “heads-of-state club” of the old Organisation of African Unity. Further, they cry “recolonisation” when, in effect, Africa has never really decolonised.
What we have is an Africanised colonialism as a protective device for dictators in the name of “no unconstitutional changes of government”. This is what South Africa and the AU invoked as the reason for not recognising the NTC even though Gaddafi’s Libya was without a constitution.
As far as Libya is concerned, the economic geopolitical calculus of Gaddafi’s fall is yet to be fully manifest. One result, however, may well be to rupture Russia’s energy geo-strategy of encircling the European energy market in tightening coils of dependence on Russian oil and oil/gas alliances. Moscow is heavily invested in the southern Mediterranean hydrocarbon sector. Hence Russia’s recognition of the NTC and signs that China, also heavily invested, is coming around as well.
Meanwhile, lost in the shuffle of South African and “concerned African intellectual” indignation at Nato (to which Turkey belongs and with which Moscow has a relationship in the Nato-Russia Council) is the plight of sub-Saharan African migrant workers marooned in Libya. They are victims of a predictable post-Gaddafi racist reaction and in dire need of AU intervention.
All the more reason why South Africa and the AU need to be engaged instead of enraged in self-marginalisation. Yet, the very plight of these stranded migrants has become one more pretext for the AU not engaging or recognising the NTC. The migrants can be sacrificed to make point? Who said the AU was not people-centred?
By the way, international mainstream media does not even register an African dimension in the Libyan equation. Rather, it’s all about Arabs and the Middle East. Not forging an AU-Arab League partnership may have been one of the first strategic mistakes made in Pretoria and Addis. How did this not happen? Could this herald a new age of global South non-solidarity?
Time and how Pretoria and Addis regroup may tell. Hopefully, better days in South African foreign policy will emerge. But this may require “on-the-couch” psychoanalysis in what may amount to a post-apartheid ideological stress syndrome affecting sections of the country’s foreign policy elite and a confused and confusing intelligentsia in crisis. Truly a cause for concern.
Francis Kornegay is a senior fellow at the Institute for Global Dialogue.
I’m always amazed at how so-called analysts miss this point: Ghadafi is a very close family friend of the Mandelas and the ANC at large. He was a man to whom they could call on during the dark days. How do you then, denounce your good old loyal friend just because shiny new ones have appeared? The media and these so-called analysts see Africa through the eyes of the colonialist, not of the African. Your naughty brother is not sent out into the wild in Africa, he is dealt with internally by the whole family. Understand that and you will understand Africa.
Great analysis.
Haughty idealism triumphs once again over pragmatism.
The anti-Nato knee jerk reaction makes little sense politically, ethically or economically.
Worse still, it continues to fuel suspicions that our political elite are a bunch of anti-Western “bitter-einders” with debts owing to the old despots club.
Only a Westener would think that an African is internationally Isolated isf the whole of africa is backing you. Since westerners dont recognise Africa as international… Gaddafi who made the desert green by giving free education including university and free health care to his people is a demon to imperialists who loves charging the sick thousnads for daring to be sick. He made the longest man made river in the world to bring water to all his people and Africa is wrong for supporting him? No … I am for the first time proud to be Black because the African Union is standing up against Peo west interests of re colonising Africa.
Undeniably the title of the article is correct.
Our foreign policy is not functional.
However, the gist of the article is, fundamentally, that we should have gone along with the majority regardless of whether it was in the right or whether this was in the long-term national interest. It is usually better, in the long run, to ask whether the policy we are pursuing is right, or is good for us.
Going along with NATO was neither right nor good for us, and we were not going to gain any brownie points by a U-turn. So in this sense, the Zuma administration’s political stance was correct.
Unfortunately, this stance is not buttressed by principle or by clear analysis, so it is not functional.
Zuma and many African leaders may have benefitted financially from Gaddafi and not from Libiya, so the popular uprising, although justified, caught them off guard.
What is remarkable too is how entrenched the South African position has become over the last six months.
Even in the last week when the “rebels” let the Tureg convoy leave for Niger without a fight, the attitude in South Africa was that it was part of a NATO plot rather than the result of deals done among Libyans themselves in a complex tribal political process.
With Egypt hovering on the brink of a military dictatorship, and Algeria unable to get out of its own economic mire, there is a chance that Libya will become the powerhouse of North Africa.
One would have thought it would be in South Africa’s future interests to have good relations with the new powers, not an antagonistic one.
Excellent incisive analysis. Your last paragraph on our foreign policy and ANC intellectuals suffering from “post apartheid stress syndrome” brilliantly hits the nail on the head
The Arab League saw this for what it was early on, so why not the AU?
Past favours cannot excuse supporting a bloodthirsty dictator. Gaddafi bought respect in developing countries by showering them (or more correctly, their elites) with money. He nonetheless won power in a military coup, and has prevented even a rudimentary civil society from emerging. All the talk of “brother leader” and revolutionary rhetoric was a cover for an extremist nepotistic oligarchy.
As evidence of the complicity of Western powers in propping up his regime emerges from the ruins, anyone who failed to see him for what he is will look a right idiot. Follow the story on Al Jazeera if you want to keep up: http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/libya
As for the ANC, no other movement did more to debunk the doctrine of no interference in another nation’s internal affairs, in the face of gross violations of human rights. Shame on them for forgetting this.
Thank you Francis for your scholarly input however I diagree with the main trusts of your submissions, namely International isolation of SA/AU, SA’s foreign policy of proping up dictators and “confused” Africa intelligentsia. I take nothing from you in the way you have presented your argument but I vehemently disagree with you.
Firstly South Africa needs to carve a foreign policy that serves Africa’s interests first and foremost no one else. Why must SA be party to an arrangement that gives 35% of the oil reserves of Lybia to France? That will be lunacy. There is certainly a need for African solutions to Africa’s problems. As a foreigner you have misunderstood the philosophy and ethos that drives and determines Africa’s foreign policy initiatives. The slogan African solutions to Africa’s problems is more than just a simplistic and emotional outburst. The stakes are very high and Africa, in order to provide well for its citizens must thread carefully in matters that undermine her right to self determination. Even when mistakes are made, solutions must be African. In Europe there was a war of 500 years including the two world wars and no one said Europe is in crisis. Europeans did their best to get themselves out of the filth. Africa must be given a chance to do the same. This is the land of the elephant, bowing to foreign pressure this time around will impact negatively on Africa’s path to greatness. You may refute this statement but watch this space.
Good analysis. South African foreign policy is a naive mixture of normative idealism and rules based multilateralism. This is largely a resultof our history and liberation background informed by the struggle against Apartheid and the ANC’s own ideological framework.
You could say that this is not pragmatic enough and that South Africa should have a more pragmatic approach that weighs up our national interest on acase by case basis. This is essentially the foreign policy approach of our BRIC partners. Analysts often claim there is not enough realism in our foreign policy but of course that depends on how our national interest is defined.
If South Africa believes its role is primary to be a bulwark against Western influence and to promote African and regional solidarity by limiting western influence and emphasising its African identity, the current policy towards Libya makes sense. This approach doesn’t allow for SA to be a bridge into Africa or an Western foothold. Far from it, it requires a deliberate deferral to regional and continental politics and the status qou.
@Una. What does it have to do with SA who Libya decides to sell their oil to? Would you accept Libya or any other banana state dictating what SA can and cannot do?
Besides, other than as a supplier of raw materials, Africa is irrelevant to the rest of the planet.
Libya, on the other hand, as a member of the Mediterranean Free Trade zone, is not insignificant to the rest of the world; which should give you pause for thought as to just what is happening behind the scenes in all those so-called revolutions taking place up there. It may also explain why Zimbabwe, and SA in the near future, can rot in hell as far as the rest of the planet is concerned.