Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
This article examines the extent to which the foreign policy of South Africa has altered since the inauguration of the Government of National Unity (GNU), following the historic, non-racial multi-party elections in May 1994. Has the African National Congress (ANC)-led regime succeeded in its stated aims of ‘normalising’ relations with the outside world while simultaneously forsaking traditional assumptions and perspectives about the national interest, and how best to define, defend, and promote it? Or has the understandable preoccupation with, and demands of, internal reconstruction led to a situation where foreign policy is ‘on hold’, in the sense that little attention has so far been directed at substantive questions concerning the norms, values, and conventions implicit in the strategic culture and policy inclinations of the ‘ancien régime’? In other words, what are the elements of continuity and change?
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17 The Nigerian question continues to vex policy-making and its attentive public in South Africa. The GNU's difficulty involves resolving the tension between a formal commitment to Nigeria's democratic opposition, stemming from a belief in the indivisibility of human rights, and a pragmatic grasp of the dangers of diplomatic isolation within Africa which might well be a by product of Mandela's high-profile rôle in calling for economic sanctions to be imposed on General Abacha's régime. In essence, this dilemma is an example of the classic ‘choice’ between framing foreign policies in accordance with what justice demands or what circumstances permit. That South Africa is now a ‘normal’ state in this regard can be seen in the attempt by the Foreign Ministry to abort a conference organised by prominent Nigerian dissidents by refusing to grant entry visas to many of Abacha's opponents in April 1996. For an account of the divisions within the ANC leadership over what is desirable and what is possible in this regard, see Johnson, R. W., ‘ANC Presses Pretoria to Abandon Anti-Abacha Line’, in The Times (London), 1 04 1996, p. 9.Google Scholar
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