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To Give or not to Give: The Politics of Ambivalence in South Africa’s Development Cooperation
Abstract
This chapter argues that, since 2009, South Africa’s development cooperation programme in Africa has increasingly been underpinned by a politics of ambivalence, resulting from the contradictions and tensions inherent in living up to the responsibilities associated with its geographical and geopolitical location, amid a fluid domestic political and economic environment. In its rhetoric, Zuma’s administration did not distance itself from the Mbeki-era focus on making South Africa the pivot of Africa’s socio-economic and political renewal. As the proposal to establish a development partnership agency suggests, it even committed itself to consolidating this continental agenda. But it was also during Zuma’s presidency that South Africa’s commitment to the goal of an African Renaissance started to become questionable, amid a discourse to re-fashion foreign policy in the service of the domestic socio-economic agenda.
Political, military and humanitarian crises endanger regional order. But even though regional powers are expected to act as stabilizers in these cases, their responses to dire demands vary in intensity and loci. Reactions go from zealous engagement to prolonged indifference and reluctance, often leaning on global multilateral institutions as well as regional or ad hoc mechanisms. This study explores the variation in the provision of stability by regional powers via a mixed-methods approach. By contrasting the intensity of regional crises with issue salience at the UN General Assembly, we select crises that drew varying attention from regional powers, despite similar severity. Focusing on Brazil and South Africa as potential regional stabilizers, we compare responses to regional crises that displayed high (Haiti and Somalia) and low (Colombia and Congo-Brazzaville) salience. We find that domestic support, concerns with status and potential competition with other stabilizers tend to play a large part in calibrating regional power responses.
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