South Africa's foreign policy toward its black neighbours

Abstract

Abstract by author:

In order to understand South Africa's foreign policy, the dissertation follows a regional rather than a country-by-country approach. A regional approach permits a clearer perception of what South Africa wants and does, and it allows a more careful delineation of South Africa's goals and strategies. Within the region, the dissertation focuses on the independent black governments. The research included a year of field work in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia and Malawi. (Mozambique and Angola were excluded because of the newness of their independence). Extensive interviews were conducted with government officials, leaders of ruling and opposition parties, and executives of multinational corporations. With the help of government documents and extensive newspaper archives, a detailed history of international relations was established with a focus on the years since 1964, when the first two countries in southern Africa became independent under black leadership

The dissertation establishes the process whereby Pretoria uses its foreign policy to maintain apartheid and insure economic growth. The focus is first on the actual process of foreign policy-making followed by an analysis of what policies and strategies are carried out

A foreign policy is linked to domestic politics in three ways: in the political culture, in the institutionalized framework for policy making and in the resources available to the government for the execution of policy. An examination of South Africa's political culture leads us to understand who is included as policitcal participants and for whom policy is formulated. The dominant political culture identifies only whites as citizens, hence, foreign policy is formulated for their benefit and, ultimately, their survival. Other factors derived from political culture are also addressed. To analyze the institutionalized framework of policy-making, we take up a hypothesis of James Rosenau who argues that when a society's resources and relationships become more involved in foreign policy issues, decision-making will be increasingly processed through the domestic rather than foreign policy system. While verifying his hypothesis we suggest additional factors in the South African case which can affect who participates in the decision-making process

The third domestic-foreign policy link, national resources, acts as an instrument for execution of policy. South Africa has considerable resources at hand with which to achieve its objectives. The country's strength in the region is the consequence not only of the wealth available inside national borders but also of the underdevelopment in neighboring states. This situation is the result of a mutual process of South African development and African underdevelopment: South Africa's growth has been fueled not only by the use of its own resources but also by the drawing off for South African use of resources in neighboring states. This process has placed these states in a position of weakness and dependency, leaving the black governments vulnerable to South African interests and demands

The second half of the dissertation examines how South Africa uses this strength and with what effect. The dissertation argues that Pretoria has followed a two-pronged stragegy of deterrence and detente in order to maintain a region of conservation and stable governments under South African domination. With deterrence as the basic strategy, Pretoria has nurtured African economic ties to South Africa and has used African dependence to intimidate neighboring governments. As a further deterrent Pretoria has reinforced its own domestic military, economic and political offensives to protect its interests. Since the late 1960's the government has attempted to establish detente with individual black governments in the hope of dividing and thus weakening Africa's anti-apartheid bloc and with the expectation of gaining economic advantages from increased trade and investment

All these efforts have had limited success. South Africa is in a weaker position than it was when the first Southern African states became independent fourteen years ago. The failure lies not with those countries most heavily dependent on South Africa; they have not dared to threaten South African interests. The problem lies with those states which are less dependent on South Africa and which espouse anti-apartheid goals. The various liberation movements in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, undermine Pretoria's regional and internal control. The government's foreign policy has not succeeded in protecting the state's major interests