Exporting Cultures of Violence or Peace? Interpreting South Africa’s Post-apartheid Role in Africa

This article examines a number of assumptions made in the early 1990s regarding the potential influence and power of South Africa and its subsequent (in)ability to sustain a peacemaking role in Africa.1 Competing interpretations are reviewed in the light of the South African government’s post-apartheid policy objectives and experience regarding Africa. It also examines its more recent behaviour as Africa’s ‘premier peacemaker’. The key argument is that the South African government, under former President Thabo Mbeki, adopted an ‘emerging middle power’ role, and that its foreign policy strategies were marked by the exercise of ‘soft power’, understood as the ability to set political agendas in a way that shapes the preferences of others. Co-optive and collaborative strategies rather than coercion characterised Pretoria’s Africa agenda, expressed through the continent’s multilateral institutions and development plans. The article notes that despite several successful interventions, the South African government’s ambitious continental role as peacemaker and post-conflict reconstruction and development agent is constrained by global political agendas and domestic challenges. It identifies a number of factors with the potential to influence the international orientation of a new administration, but concludes that until the ruling party clarifies its ideological orientation, the Mbeki template will remain.