SA needs to rethink its foreign policy

Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma wanted an embassy in every country in Africa, regardless of their investment potential, says the writer. Picture: Masi Losi/Independent Media

Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma wanted an embassy in every country in Africa, regardless of their investment potential, says the writer. Picture: Masi Losi/Independent Media

Published Nov 29, 2016

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In order to prioritise job creation, we ought to be more strategic with diplomatic postings to stimulate investment, writes Douglas Gibson.

Do we really have to wait for 2019, with a new president and a new government, before we change foreign policy course?

We should already take a firm decision that what was, was. A generation ago when the ANC came to power, then president Nelson Mandela wanted human rights to form the basis of our foreign policy. That was long ago and we have strayed as a country ever further from that course, no more so than during our embrace of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan when we broke our own law and international law in welcoming him to our country.

Many in government confuse the interests and romantic attachments of their political party, the ANC, with the interests of South Africa.

Old friendships, old loyalties, old ties that mean little a quarter of a century later, are allowed to determine many of our actions. Old suspicions, old resentments, even old hatreds colour our foreign policy attitude. This is no longer appropriate.

What is South Africa’s most important priority? Job creation. Economic growth enables the private sector to create jobs. Our unemployment rate is among the highest in the world, with no signs of abating. We are not growing; we are not creating enough new jobs.

One of the most important contributors to growth is investment. That being so, surely our foreign policy should focus on achieving our most important national priority: economic growth and investment?

Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was a talented and respected foreign minister. Under her reign, South Africa’s foreign service expanded dramatically and one of the aims was to have an embassy in every country in Africa.

Little account was taken of the trade and investment potential of each of these numerous countries and the objective seemed to be entirely political: if we had representation in a country, they were more likely to support us in international forums. We now have more than 120 embassies in the world. Do we need them?

Since the reform of the UN is an ever-receding target and with it our fading aim of securing a seat on the Security Council, the time has arrived to take a cool look at all these embassies and decide whether we are getting value for money.

Not only is it the vast expense of maintaining our officials, buildings, housing, families, schooling and transportation, it is also stretching to the limit available human resources.

Then there is the question of our ambassadors and High Commissioners (the latter go to Commonwealth countries but have the same status). For historical reasons, it was essential to have a diplomatic corps looking more like South Africa and to do that, one had to make many political appointments because there were few trained and senior career diplomats.

A generation later, many excellent younger officials are being groomed but often their path is blocked by “bed-blockers”, middle-aged and older officials who were given jobs as a reward for services in the struggle or for nepotistic reasons, who are not up to becoming senior diplomats. The professionalisation of the service is also slowed because of the proliferation of political appointees, only some of whom make outstanding ambassadors.

The training and recruiting of officials is also deficient in economic, trade, investment and business skills. Far too many of our officials know little or nothing about these subjects, even those charged with responsibility for these aspects at missions.

We need to change direction entirely. Even those officials and political appointees who are communists and those who have a dislike of business and a hatred of “the West” and who lean automatically towards every undemocratic leader in the world, must take stock.

While not forgetting our human rights values, South Africa’s new attitude should be: “Open for business. Any country, democratic or undemocratic, left, right or centre, that wants to do ethical business with us, is a potential friend and partner.”

Instead of a knee-jerk anti-American, anti-European, anti-British and pro-Cuban, Venezuelan, Zimbabwean attitude, we ought to resolve to become truly non-aligned. Of course, we must remain close to India, China, Brazil and Russia. It is in our own interests and especially our economic interests to do so. All of these countries should be our friends, together with the US, the UK, Asia and Europe.

There is a bigger world out there and we need to be in it looking for business, trade and investment.

Take just one area that I know well. In Thailand, when I was there, I had six South African diplomats to assist me.

We also had about 14 locally recruited staff - generally highly educated and excellent quality. The number has not grown.

Australia has 60 diplomats and several hundred locals in Thailand. The UK has 69 diplomats. The US has 264 diplomats and several thousand locals. Tell me who is taking Thailand seriously?

Look at the ever-increasing trade gap between our country and Thailand in the latter’s favour and ask yourself whether we could not do better there and in ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations: 10 countries with 400 million people, many moving into the middle class.

It’s time to rationalise some of the superfluous nice-to-have embassies.

Let’s retire some of the mediocre ambassadors, retrain and upskill officials with potential so they become knowledgeable and useful about trade and investment, post them to strengthen our representation in countries that can help us realise our major priority, increasing investment, increasing trade, promoting economic growth and creating jobs for our people. Forget outdated ideology and focus on jobs, jobs, jobs.

* Douglas Gibson, a former opposition chief whip and former ambassador to Thailand, is a keynote speaker and writer

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

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