South Africa, BRICS, and Global Governance

How SA Tried to Change the World and Succeeded in Changing Itself

(Draft 31 May 2017: Comments welcome, but please do not cite without permission)

Philip Nel Department of Politics University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand philip.nel@otago.ac.nz Abstract: Since the dawn of a democratic order in South Africa in the early 1990s, the country has had the ambition to play an important role in shaping global governance. Right from the start, though, there were ambiguities and tensions in this ambition. While embracing liberal globalization, South Africa at the same time also tried to exercise issue leadership in a range of global governance venues in order to promote the interests of developing countries, and in particular of Africa. Closer cooperation with and eventual membership of BRICS gave further impetus to South Africa’s desire to be a regional leader and global player, but has shifted its overall orientation away from embracing liberalism to the promotion of more developmental-state and “sovereignist” approaches. This shift was not due solely to BRICS membership, as it has been brewing in policy discussions and domestic political debates in South Africa since the mid 2000s. However, BRICS membership clearly coincided with its consolidation. This contribution traces this evolution in South Africa’s orientation by looking at the factors that made South Africa attractive to the other BRICs, and how BRICS membership coincided with a marked shift in South Africa’s domestic development approach and in its orientation to and behaviour in global governance. It also assesses this evolution by raising the question of whether South Africa has become more or less of an inclusive social order. Introduction

South Africa was invited to join the BRIC group of states on 23 December 2010 by the

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Yang Jiechi (Besada, Tok and

Winters 2013). This followed extensive lobbying by South African President Jacob Zuma

during 2009-2010 (Stuenkel 2013) among the other BRICs, Brazil, India, and Russia. The

invitation came just a year into the first term of President Jacob Zuma, who was elected

President by Parliament in 2009, and can be regarded as a major foreign policy success of the

Zuma era. This chapter argues that it was more a mixed blessing than an unqualified success,

though. On the plus side, it allowed South Africa to join an important agenda-setting and

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operational club of emerging global and regional powers, thus providing a new outlet for

South Africa’s long-standing ambition to make a difference to global governance. In the

process, two costs were incurred.

The first and most important is that BRICS membership has not, as hoped for by the Zuma

government, contributed to “the radical transformation” of the South African economy in

favour of a more inclusive, state-led development-focused growth model. In fact,

developments since South Africa joined BRICS have deepened the exclusivist, limited-access

nature of the South African economy. A number of structural weaknesses, some of which are

leftovers from the apartheid era, but reinforced by policy choices made since 1994, prevent

South Africa from achieving the dream of a non-racial, inclusive open-access that is promised

in the 1996 Constitution. The net effect of these weaknesses is that a large segment of the

South African population, about a quarter to a third, find themselves systematically excluded

from the benefits of a modern industrialised economy. To combat this, the Zuma government

embraced the notion of “radical economic transformation,” to be achieved through a state-led

industrial development project that would enhance Black participation in the economy and

would lead to the elimination of poverty by 2030. If anything, exclusion has worsened since

2010, despite the commercial opportunities that BRICS membership brought, and South

Africa’s increasing commercial presence in Africa. By perpetuating and deepening South

Africa’s dependence on primary commodity extraction, the close association with China in

particular has not brought South Africa closer to halt the relative decline of its manufacturing

sector, and has done little to reverse the education and employment disparities that are some

of the worst legacies of apartheid. It would be wrong to blame BRICS membership

exclusively for the continuation of the structural and institutional weaknesses of the South

African economy. Most of the blame rests with the way in which President Zuma has

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developed a strong neo-patrimonial hold on key levers of the economy, particularly State

Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and the organs of state procurement and fiscal management. These

instruments have been used, often in ways that disregard constitutional rules and constraints,

to create and capture rents for him, his closest allies, and segments of the Black business elite.

BRICS membership provided some means to oil this rent-creation machine, through a range

of commercial and infrastructural deals between South African authorities and BRICS

members.

The second cost of BRICS membership has to do with South Africa’s foreign policy

orientation, and its current contributions to global governance. Most significantly, BRICS

membership provided legitimacy for, and a means through which, the Zuma government

could make its mark as the leading regional power in Africa. Despite a range of ambiguities,

South Africa’s original post-transition foreign-policy orientation was predominantly that of an

emerging middle-power and bridge-builder (Schoeman 2000; Jordaan 2003). Post-apartheid

South Africa embraced multilateralism as a vehicle to link the legitimate development

concerns of poorer states and the opportunities provided by a globalised liberal economic

order. By 2017, this orientation has not completely disappeared. Gradually, and significantly

so since 2010, a second aspiration, that of being a regional power, has become prominent

(Qobo and Dube 2015). This orientation represents an alternative approach to globalisation

than the middle-power approach, and aims more explicitly at securing regional hegemony,

both for the sake of prioritising domestic development, but also as a means to join in the

establishment of alternative centres of what Carmody calls “gregional” power in global

governance, capable of challenging “Western” hegemony (Carmody 2012). South Africa was

invited to join BRICS largely because of its economic preponderance and leadership

ambitions in Africa, and BRICS membership both legitimated and provided additional means

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for South Africa to secure its status as a regional hegemon. This reorientation of South

Africa’s external role was accompanied by a much more inward-looking re-prioritising of

“the national interest” (see below), and a more instrumental appreciation of how the rest of

Africa could contribute to South Africa’s well-being. On the global stage, and, as a corollary

to the inward looking regional-power orientation, South Africa is more willing today than in

the early post-apartheid era to support the anti-liberal “sovereignist” agenda also favoured by

other BRICS members.

The story of South Africa’s membership of BRICS is thus a tale of how South Africa, by

originally setting out to change the world for the betterment of itself and of its continent,

ended up recalibrating its domestic development and its global orientation, and not

necessarily for the better. In what follows, I relate this story in three parts. The first shows

why South Africa and the then four BRICs states found each other attractive to start off with,

and why the active diplomacy of the Zuma presidency had a favourable reception. The second

episode focuses more directly on how BRICS membership shaped latent and emerging

tendencies in South Africa’s domestic and foreign policy orientations. A third part looks at

how, despite the expressed desire of President Zuma, BRICS membership has coincided with

a weakening, not an improvement, of the capacity South Africa to become an inclusive social

order. A final section concludes by situating the preceding episodes in the context of a

conceptual typology that notes a fundamental isomorphism shared by all the BRICS members,

South Africa included.

1. South Africa as “another BRIC in the wall” (Carmody 2012)

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Being invited to join BRICs in 2010 was an important event for South Africa. It did not only

reflect successful diplomatic efforts on the part of the Jacob Zuma administration, but also

cemented South Africa’s reputation as an emerging regional power with global standing. The

SA government hoped to exploit the commercial and diplomatic opportunities that

membership offered to support and deepen the “New Growth Path” (NGP) – announced in

2010, and since then replaced by the National Development Plan (NDP) as the long-term

political plan aimed at eliminating poverty and halving inequality by 2030 (see Table 1 for a

South African Timeline). In promoting the NGP, and the NDP, the growth trajectories and

experiences of Brazil, China, and India were regarded as analogous to that of, and as models

for, South Africa. It was also projected that South Africa, in partnership with the BRICs,

could contribute to and benefit from the growth potential of Africa. Zuma, in contrast to

Mbeki who was sceptical about China’s goals in Africa, was impressed by the commercial

opportunities that China (and other BRIC members) held, and saw BRIC countries as crucial

partners in cementing South Africa’s place in Africa, in promoting agendas for global change,

and in enhancing Zuma own particular domestic agenda (see Zuma 2013).

<<Table 1 here>>

By 2010, China was already South Africa’s main trading partner, taking 8.8 per cent of its

merchandise exports, mainly ores, slag and ash, and iron and steel. At that stage, the USA

took 7.6 per cent of SA’s exports, and Japan 6.9 per cent. China accounted for 13.9 per cent

of all merchandise imports into SA, mainly electrical machinery and appliances, footwear and

clothing. India also featured as one of SA’s top 10 export destinations (taking 2 per cent of

total merchandise exports), and as one of its five most important suppliers. In contrast, Brazil

and Russia took only 1 and 0.4 per cent of SA’s exports respectively (SACU 2012; Brand

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South Africa 2012). Expectations were high that membership of BRICS would enable South

Africa to explore its comparative advantages in increasing exports to all of these markets,

specifically in fruit and related products, ores, and machinery (IDC 2012). Inward foreign

direct investment (IFDI) from China and India into South Africa grew noticeably since 2003,

and India became one of the top five sources of IFDI to South Africa between January 2003

and July 2015 (Sanchez 2015). By the end of 2011, South Africa – in terms of stock— had

become the eighth largest recipient of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). In

return, by 2011 a fifth of South Africa’s stock of OFDI was in the BRIC countries, mainly

China. This share was slightly more than the total stock of South Africa’s OFDI to Africa in

2011 (UNCTAD 2013).

Hence, and obviously, growing commercial relations between South Africa and some of the

BRICs (mainly Chin and India) did play a role in the invitation that the BRICs extended to

South Africa to join the group. In addition, South Africa’s proven track record as a supplier of

mineral commodities, and its leading role in the development and provision of mineral-related

services, made it an attractive partner for the commodity-hungry China and India. The total

value of South Africa’s mineral reserves is estimated at US$2,5 trillion. South Africa leads

the world in the mining of platinum, chrome, vanadium and manganese, is the world’s third-

largest producer of gold, and excels in the provision of mining-related services (BRICS

2011). This, coupled with the sophistication of South Africa’s service delivery in the fields of

personal and corporate finance, and in telecommunications, stimulated BRICs interest.

However, it was not only the size of the South African market or the degree of economic

exchange between South Africa and the BRICs that secured SA a place at the BRICS table in

2010. SA is a midget compared to the other members. In 2016, SA held only the 30th position

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in GDP measured in constant 2005 international dollars, factoring in purchasing power), and

at $736 billion (in constant international dollars) its total output was less than 4 per cent of

China’s, about 9 per cent of India’s, 20 per cent of Russia’s, 24 per cent of Brazil’s, and 0.6

per cent of total world output (IMF 2016a). Also in terms of trade, South Africa was a small

player in 2010, providing only 4 per cent of imports into India, just over 1 per cent into China,

0.4 per cent in the case of Brazil, and 0.2 per cent into Russia. (IDC 2012).

Despite its relative smallness, South Africa was attractive as a future BRICS member because

of a mix of a number of factors, additional to its growing commercial links with some of the

existing members. It is difficult to place these in a strict rank order of importance, but there is

good reason to believe that South Africa’s aspirations to be “the gateway to Africa” played

the most significant role. In addition, South Africa’s credibility among a variety of actors as a

global bridge-builder and reform-minded participant, made it an attractive partner for a group

who saw itself as the core shapers of an alternative global order that would not challenge

liberal globalisation tout court, but aimed at making globalisation work more to the benefit of

the likes of emerging markets and their partners in the Global South. The perception of South

Africa as the gateway to Africa, and as a credible and respected reform partner were based on

the way in which it re-integrated with the global, and African, economy after 1994, the moral

weight of its own domestic transition, and its proven role as bridge-builder in global

governance in the 1990s and early 2000s.

On the most basic level of identity conception, the SA leadership embraced and cultivated the

notion that its transition from apartheid to non-racial inclusive democracy was an exceptional

moral achievement. And, indeed, it was. SA was eager, and was encouraged, to carry its

message of peaceful change, rule-bound justice, and reconciliation onto the world stage, and a

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distinct idealism centred around these themes could be observed in its foreign policy right

from the start (Becker 2010).

Over time this was translated into a global reformist élan: the pursuit of a more equitable

distribution of power and privilege on the global stage, and the celebration of rule-based

multilateralism as the preferred means to secure the interests of developing countries in a

globalising world economy. The notion that South Africa’s transition from apartheid was

exceptional and that it is thus entitled/honour bound to help to make the world more just and

protect the weak, continues as an implicit identity-driver in its foreign policy up until today.

The most recent White Paper on South Africa’s Foreign Policy (DIRCO 2011) and the glossy

20 Year Review - South Africa 1994-2014, published by the SA Presidency (2014), emphasise

South Africa’s “unique approach to global issues” and its commitment to carrying the

principle of “ubuntu” (the virtues of other-directedness, non-confrontation, and compassion)

to the world.

Underlying this idealised self-conception are some material interests, but it would be wrong

to not also appreciate how this self-conception shaped South Africa’s behaviour during a

large part of the post-1994 years. As far as the material interests are concerned, South

Africa’s most immediate post-apartheid desire was to fully integrate with the global political

economy as a means to grow out of the confines that apartheid imposed and invited. This

implied an acceptance of the liberal principles underlying the global economy, an ideological

price that was offset by a commitment to global reform and the promotion of an agenda that

would favour the dispossessed and marginalised globally (Nel, Taylor and Van der

Westhuizen 2001; Jordaan 2012).

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In stark contrast to the protectionist/isolated years of 1985-1990, post-apartheid South Africa

embarked on an ambitious programme of economic liberalisation – a dramatic “gamble on

investment” as one commentator aptly described it (Nattrass 1996; see also Nel 2002). This

was a programme of rapid liberalisation of external economic relations, coupled from 1996

onwards with a liberal domestic macro-economic policy (titled the “Growth, Employment,

and Redistribution” – GEAR programme) that combined prudential state budgeting,

conservative monetary policy, privatisation, and broadening of the participation black South

Africans in private economic ownership and management (so-called Black Economic

Empowerment – BEE – changed to BBBEE - Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment -

in 2003). Many, but not all, of the protectionist mechanisms used by the embattled apartheid

state were abolished, South Africa embraced the results of the Uruguay Round of GATT trade

negotiations, and joined the WTO. South Africa was forced to join the WTO as a “developed

economy” and not as a developing economy. This implied deeper tariff cuts and fewer

developmental concessions. Deeper integration of South African business into the global

economy also implied the relocation of headquarters of South African multinational firms,

ostensibly to exploit the opportunities that internationalisation brought. South African imports

and exports, as a percentage of GDP, increased from a five-year average of 39 in the period

1990-1994 to 60 in the period 2005-2009 (World Development Indicators 2015).

South Africa committed under the GATT Uruguay Round to bind all but two per cent of all

its tariff lines and replace non-tariff barriers with transparent tariffs (Edwards 2015). By 2010,

the mean applied weighted tariff rate on all South African products was a third of what it was

in the early 1990s (World Development Indicators 2015; see also DTI 2010). On a regional

level, South Africa joined the Southern African Development Community (SADC), initiating

a SADC free-trade area that came into effect in 2008 (Sandrey 2013). Not qualifying for

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membership of the Lomé Convention and its preferential treatment of African, Caribbean and

Pacific (ACP) states, South Africa (as part of Southern African Customs Union which also

includes Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland) negotiated an extra-regional Trade,

Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) with the European Union, signed in 1999

(Krapohl, Meissner & Muntschick 2014), and also a free trade agreement with the European

Free Trade Association states (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland) that came

into effect in 2008. It also benefitted from the African Growth and Opportunity (AGOA) Act,

passed into law in 2000 by the US Congress. AGOA provides quota- and duty free entry of

some African goods to the US market, and contains trade preferences that are more

favourable for African states than those contained in the WTO’s Generalized System of

Preferences (Prinsloo 2016).

Compared to the large divestments from South Africa in the 1980s, the next two decades was

a boom time for IFDI, leading to a tenfold increase in the value of IFDI stock, reaching an

average value of US$111,570 million in the period 2005-2009 (UNCTAD 2016). This

represented an increase from just over 8 per cent of GDP in the period 1990-94 to close to 40

per cent in the period 2005-2009. The stock of OFDI by South African institutions constituted

an average of 5 per cent of its GDP in the period 1990-1994 (Verhoef 2011). By 2010, it had

increased to 25 per cent of GDP (UNCTAD 2012).

One of the most important tools through which post-apartheid South Africa secured IFDI was

the signing of a large number of bilateral investment treaties that made extensive provision of

third-party arbitration in the case of investor-state disputes. During the immediate post-

apartheid period (1994-1998) South Africa entered into 15 BITs, mostly with European

countries, and by 2005 had signed 41 such treaties, some of them also with other developing

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states (Peterson 2006). By 2009, forty-two BITs were in place. While it was clearly part of an

aggressive strategy to re-internationalise as quickly as possible by providing assurances to

risk-averse investors, there is also evidence that the South African authorities entered into

these without much thought about the range of issues that could lead to investor-state

disputes, and the implications of these agreements for national policy autonomy (Poulsen

2014). We will see how South African attitudes towards this essential liberal instrument of

global integration changed dramatically by the time that South Africa joined BRICS.

Regional integration was a very important component of global economic reintegration, and

provided the basis for the notion that South Africa acts as a “gateway” to Africa. Such status

is largely self-assigned, and not necessarily popular in the rest of Africa (Alden and

Schoeman 2013; Obi 2015), but it was instrumental in persuading the original BRICs

members to invite South Africa to join. For many observers, economic integration with the

rest of Africa amounted to malign economic penetration by South African companies,

resulting in deindustrialisation in certain industries, the squeezing out of local retail, the

dissemination of liberal economic norms, and contradictorily, the imposition of non-tariff

trade and other barriers on neighbouring states (Daniel and Bengu 2009, Southall and

Comninos 2009, Carmody 2012, Nel and Taylor 2013). The mining, retail, beverages,

telecommunication, and banking sectors in South, made extensive use of the pro-Africa focus

of the Mbeki era (see below) to expand their foreign investment stock across the continent. By

2011, South Africa was the fifth largest holder of FDI stocks in Africa, and the second largest

developing-country investor in Africa (after Malaysia) (UNCTAD 2013).

Although driven by different domestic agendas, and following different sequencing schedules,

there was close symmetry between South Africa’s post-1994 drive to liberalise and the global

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integration programmes of the BRIC members. All five BRICS members experienced a

deepening of integration into the global economy in the 1990s and 2000s, albeit from

different baselines. Both India and Brazil instituted programmes of trade and international

financial liberalisation that coincided South Africa’s in the early 1990s, albeit from lower

levels of existing integration than South Africa. Noticeably, South Africa was already

relatively deeply embedded in the global economy, compared to the other BRICS, by the time

of the first fully inclusive democratic election in South Africa in 1994. This was due to its

role as supplier of highly-valued mineral commodities, including gold and platinum, and the

fact that its financial institutions had important international linkages. By the time that it

joined BRICS, South Africa had increased its exposure and was the most economically

globalised of all the BRICS. Axel Dreher’s 100-point index of economic globalization, which

incorporates both de facto capital and trade flows, as well as the depth of existing de iure

restrictions on such flows, provides a useful guide to measure a state’s integration with the

global economy (Dreher 2006). Taking 5-year averages, the relative scores of the five BRICS

in the period 1990-94 (with the score for 2010-2014 in brackets) were: Brazil 46 (51), China

40 (50), India 24 (42), Russia 31 (53), and South Africa 51 (65). Global reintegration, and

extensive penetration of the African continent was good for the South African economy, In

real terms, South Africa’s GDP was 77 per cent larger by 2012 compared to 1994. In per

capita terms, this translated into real growth of 31 per cent (World Development Indicators

2015).

South Africa also had a significant impact as a “mobilizer” (Vom Hau et al. 2012) of the

African region, in particular to get the region to look for ways in which it could benefit from

integration into the liberal world economy. It also persuaded the Rest of Africa to be more

forthcoming in accepting standards of good governance as defined by Western powers and the

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International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Aligning Africa closer with global liberal norms, in return for better economic access to

Western markets and deep Official Development Assistance (ODA) pockets, turned out to be

the main legacy of the Mbeki Presidency (1999 – 2008). Mbeki personally invested in and

provided ideological justification and organisational capacity for the NEPAD (the New

Partnership for Africa’s Development) programme, which became the flagship of Africa’s

programme of rebirth and accelerated economic and political modernization (Taylor and Nel

2002). In 2002 NEPAD became an official African Union project, with headquarters in

Johannesburg, South Africa, and aimed at enhanced economic cooperation within Africa and

between Africa and its international donors and well-wishers, based on infrastructural

modernization, trade and investment facilitation, and improving corporate and public

governance on the continent. Although China was by 2010 already significantly involved in a

large number of African states, Brazil, India, and Russia were especially encouraged by SA’s

proven capacity to influence Africa’s agenda and its economic successes in Africa to embrace

South Africa’s self-appointed status as “gateway” to a continent whose economic prospects

looked particularly rosy in 2010 (Taylor 2014).

South Africa’s commitment to a liberal (open) global economic order, and its willingness to

take the lead in persuading the rest of Africa that this order could also benefit them, was

balanced by a desire to assist in enlarging the development opportunities for poorer states, and

to do so in terms that would echo South Africa’s own domestic commitment to justice and

non-discrimination (Jordaan 2012). By 2010, post-apartheid South Africa’s contribution to

global governance, and in particular its commitment to represent a “South” agenda in the

existing institutions of global governance, were well established. Highlights include its

membership (as the only African member) of the G20 since its founding in 1999, the first of

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two stints on the UN Security Council (2007 -2008, and again in 2011-2012), and privileged

participation in the so-called Heiligendamm process launched by Germany in 2007 in which

the G7 group of industrialised states interacted with China, India, South Africa, Brazil and

Mexico on a systematic basis, leading to the enhanced global-economic role of the G20 in

2009 (Vickers 2008). South Africa’s enhanced status and global ambitions also contributed to

the formation of the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) in 2003 (Nel and

Stephen 2010). This enhanced South Africa’s role in the arena of South-South cooperation

and led to important policy initiatives, including the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and

China) alliance that was formed in the lead-up to the 2009 Copenhagen Conference of the

Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The

timeline in Table 1 provide additional evidence of the prominent role that South Africa played

both in institutions of the Global South, and in hosting global policy conferences in which it

could hone its capacity to influence the agendas of the Global North. The 2000s turned out to

be the high-point of this middle-power, bridge-building role, especially in the context of

negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and in the G-20 processes. As Stephen

(2013: 97) notes, South Africa’s negotiation strategy in the WTO has been less

confrontational and more integrative than either of its close ideological partners in IBSA (see

also Donna Lee 2006, Nel and Stephen 2010). Since the creation of the WTO’s Dispute

Resolution Mechanism in 1995, South Africa has not been a complainant in a single case,

although it has been a respondent in five, and a 3rd party in seven. In contrast, India has been a

complainant in 23 and Brazil in 31 (WTO 2017).

As a bridge-builder, South Africa was influential in pushing the industrialised countries to

live up to their own liberal principles, in particular as far as liberalization of agricultural trade

is concerned, and to accept a developmental agenda in such contentious matters as intellectual

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property rights and in the Doha Round of WTO negotiations that kicked off in November

2001. In turn, South Africa has used its influence to keep developing countries engaged in

global trade negotiations after the famous African walk-out at Cancun in 2003 (which South

Africa joined), and to accept (at least some of) the so-called “new” trade issues, such as trade

facilitation, trade and investment, and trade facilitation that industrialised states wanted to

impose (Lee 2006; Jordaan 2012). Straddling the distributionally polarised agendas of the

South and the industrialised states means that South Africa’s role was (and remains) often

ambiguous, and that it is sometimes perceived as having moved too closely to a position

where it not only provides legitimacy to a global neoliberal agenda on trade and development,

but has been co-opted by the major powers (Bond 2004, Jordaan 2012, Lee 2006).

South Africa’s middle-power bridge building diplomacy also supported different

revisionist/reform attempts in other fora of global governance. These included attempts to

balance/block the power of the North in climate-change negotiations, pursuing institutional

reforms such as a revision of voting rights in international financial institutions and expanded

permanent membership of the UNSC, and influencing the agenda of the G-20 to be (Stephen

2013 ; Nel 2010). South Africa was widely perceived and valued as an emerging reform-

orientated middle power (Schoeman 2000, Jordaan 2003), committed to multilateral, rule-

based global governance, and well placed to challenge Western dominance, but also to bridge

divides between the established powers of the industrial North and the global South. This

fitted the global reformist interests of the BRIC nations very well.

2. South Africa as a BRICS member: From bridge-builder to regional power

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BRICS membership coincided with important changes in the foreign and domestic policies of

South Africa. Some of these had a long gestation, dating back to the middle of the 2000s and

cannot be attributed exclusively to the effect of BRICS membership. However, BRICS gave it

a certain momentum, focus, and longevity. Two important trends stand out. First, and in

contrast to the almost helter-skelter manner in which South Africa embraced global economic

integration on liberal terms between 1994 and 2007, there has been a distinct national-

interests-first reorientation in economic development outlook, and trade and foreign policy in

general. Secondly, South Africa has become more explicit in challenging some of the

universalist and interventionist principles that underlie Western liberalism’s approach to

human rights, good governance, and humanitarian intervention, prompting some observers to

speak of a “sovereignist turn” in South Africa’s orientation. By enumerating these changes in

what follows, I do not want to create the impression that South Africa has turned its back

totally on the policies of the 1990s and 2000s that stood it in reasonably good stead. Middle-

power bridge-building is not dead, and neither is South Africa’s basic commitment to a global

economic order integrated on liberal precepts. However, by the time that Jacob Zuma became

President in 2009, criticism of the failings of these policies had become much more prominent,

and the process of looking for alternatives was well under way.

Three processes/documents were crucial signposts of the changes that would come to fruition

after Zuma took over the presidency of the ANC in 2007, and became President of the

country in 2009. The one was the work of the National Planning Commission (NPC) from

2010 to 2013, including a “Diagnostic Report” – a comprehensive review of strengths,

weaknesses, and opportunities facing South Africa. The Diagnostic Report formed the basis

of the eventual National Development Plan, and was quite critical of the lack of achievement

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in a number of areas, including employment, broad-based quality education, and socio-

economic and spatial inequalities (National Planning Commission 2013).

To overcome these shortcomings, the NDP proposed that government policies be geared

toward turning the South African state into a capable, strong, and accountable developmental

state, associated with explicit industrial and labour-market policies that aim at decent job

creation and lifting per capita income levels across the board. Foreign policies and external

economic relations should support these goals, and the range and sequencing of external

liberalisation and integration with the global economy must be made dependent on domestic

industrial and redistributive goals. Chapter Seven of the NDP made it clear that foreign

relations, including projects focused on shaping global governance and cementing South

Africa’s position in Africa, in future had to serve one and only one purpose: promoting the

national interests of South Africa, conceived in terms of overcoming the shortcomings cited

above, and identifying the key global partners that could assist in this:

“The shift of global power towards developing countries provides South Africa with

an opportunity to maximise its regional and international influence over the next 20 to

30 years. Policy making should be driven by the objectives set out at the inaugural

meeting of the National Planning Commission in May 2011: to grow the economy,

reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of all South Africans. In other words,

government’s global and regional policy-making stance should be South Africa-

centric. Policy-making should improve the country’s functional integration in the

region, on the continent, among developing countries – especially with key states like

Brazil, India, and China – and in the world, with measurable outcomes.”

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The 2010 South African Trade Policy and Strategy Framework produced by the Department

of Trade and Industry (DTI 2010) pointed out that while South Africa had been quite

successful since the early 1990s at liberalising trade by reducing tariffs and cancelling them

altogether on more than 50% of imports, this had not assisted South Africa to give full effect

to its industrial development plans and diversification of exports. To align trade and industrial

development better, it argued, a strategic developmental approach to tariff policy had to be

introduced – analogous to the managed trade policies followed by “successful developing

economies” – meaning China, in particular.

The third document that clearly heralded the realignment towards a domestic developmental

agenda was the 2011 White Paper on Foreign Policy issued by the re-named Department of

International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO 2011). Titled “Building a Better World: The

Diplomacy of Ubuntu”, the White Paper continued to frame foreign policy in terms of the

unique and exceptional “South African experience”, normatively couched in the universalist

terms of “Ubuntu”. Beyond this normative veneer, though, the White Paper is quite hardnosed

in its explicit commitment to the promotion of national interests, conceived of in the same

domestically-orientated terms that the NDP uses. While the themes of protecting

multilateralism, and promoting cooperation to secure “a just, humane, and equitable world

order of greater security, peace, dialogue and economic justice” receive fair hearing, the

White Paper repeatedly emphasises that the goal of South Africa must be to “build an

environment in which it can realise its national socio-economic agenda as well as its political

and security interests” (DIRCO, 2011: 10). As was the case with the Diagnostic Report

mentioned above, and in Chapter 7 of NDP, the White Paper contained an implicit critique of

the universalistic role of bridge-building middle-power that was associated with South

Africa’s foreign policy under Mandela and Mbeki, now replaced with a solid commitment to

19

pursue a narrow range of national interests above all else. By the time of the fifth BRICS

Summit in 2013, the first held in South Africa, the conception of national interests as defined

in terms of a developmental approach to domestic and internationally-focused policy making

was firmly established as the distinctive trademark of the Zuma era in South African politics

(Zuma 2013).

This re-conceptualisation of national interests – manifested in these various documents and

other policy declarations (Qobo and Dube 2015) – and the policy and behavioural changes to

be reviewed below, can be seen as manifestations of a distinct “sovereignist” turn on the part

of South Africa. “Sovereignist” here refers to a normative preference for domestic and

international arrangements that create maximum room for national autonomy protection of

sovereignty – shared by all the BRICS, what Miles Kahler calls “maximum policy discretion

to deal with the effects of globalization” (Kahler 2013). As Laïdi argues:

“The BRICS form a coalition of sovereign state defenders. While they do not seek to

form an anti-Western political coalition based on a counter-proposal or radically

different vision of the world, they are concerned with maintaining their independence

of judgment and national action in a world that is increasingly economically and

socially interdependent. They consider that state sovereignty trumps all, including, of

course, the political nature of its underpinning regimes.” (Laidi 2012: 614)

By the time of the 5th BRICS summit (held in South Africa) in 2013, such a sovereignist

approach became a distinguishing feature of the Zuma era. It is no coincidence that BRICS’s

most important sovereignist initiative to date – the New Development Bank, was agreed to at

the 5th Summit, followed by the announcement of a Contingent Reserve Arrangement at the

20

6th Summit 2014 (in Brazil). More recently, the idea of a new credit rating agency, aimed

against the dominance of the established “Western” agencies, has also been floated.

Although hardly explored in the literature on a developmental state in South Africa (see the

edited volume Edigheji 2010), there is a close association between the notion of the protection

of sovereignty/national autonomy and the pursuit of national development strategies in an era

of (and in reaction to) economic globalisation (Polidano 2001). In addition, the aspiration to

be recognized as a regional power, in contrast to the role of middle-power bridge-builder, also

presupposes a change of priorities. Bridge-building uses the strategy of issue entrepreneurship

to carve out the policy space in which the developing world – including Africa - can benefit

from economic globalisation. The regional-power approach, in contrast, relies on organising

and mobilising the region to guarantee that the regional power secures its national interests

first and foremost (Vom Hau et al. 2012). In turn, the regional power undertakes to provide

regional public goods, such as the provision of peace-making and peace-keeping resources,

protection against foreign intervention, and representing Africa in global governance fora

(Hentz 2008, Vickers 2013).

The national-interests first, sovereignist turn in South Africa’s interaction with the world is

reflected in three significant policy innovations during the years of BRICS membership. Two

relate to domestic development priorities, while a third is reflected in South Africa’s voting

behaviour at the UN.

Domestically, a distinct counter-movement against perceived restrictions on national

autonomy grew in intensity from 2009-2010 onwards. The specific context was a review of

the forty-two BITs that South Africa entered into since 1994 (DTI 2009). As explained above,

21

this formed part of a “gamble on investment” which characterised the first decade of the post-

apartheid era (Peterson 2006). BITs have been interpreted as a crucial dimension of the

legalization of world politics. Abbot et al. (2000) describe legalization as a form of

institutionalization that is characterized by heightened obligations, greater precision in rules

and, perhaps most crucially, the delegation of rule interpretation and enforcement to third

parties. It is this later feature of the BITs that South Africa had entered into that precipitated a

rethink on its part, initiated by a case brought by Italian investors (with a holding company in

Luxembourg). The plaintiff claimed that the stipulations of the Mineral and Resources

Development Act of 2002 (MPRDA) constituted an infringement of their property rights and

that it was unlawful as due process was allegedly not followed. What the plaintiffs found

particularly damaging were the stipulation of the MPRDA that South Africa maintains

national-control of mineral resources, and that all companies had to embark on programmes

of Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) (see Piero Foresti, Laura de Carli

& Others v. Republic of South Africa, ICSID Case No. ARB(AF)/07/01). The claim was

settled in 2010 (mining rights were exchanged for a 5% Black empowerment arrangement),

but the case triggered a comprehensive review of the potential implications of BITs for the

national policy autonomy of the South African state. This culminated in the rescinding of a

number of BITs with European states from 2012 onwards (Norton Rose Fulbright 2014,

Bosman 2016). By the end of 2015, a new South African “Protection of Investment Act”

came into effect, offering investors protection in national courts, mediation, recourse to state-

to-state arbitration, but ruling out third-party investor-state arbitration. South Africa was not

alone in questioning the wisdom of bargaining away national policy autonomy for the sake of

IFDI, and the issue of state-investor arbitration became a major bone of contention in debates

about mega-regional trade agreements such as TTIP and the TPP. UNCTAD also devoted

22

considerable attention to generating new guidelines on sovereign-friendly investment regimes

(UNCTAD 2016: Chapter 3).

A second manifestation of the inward-looking national-interest-first change in South African

policy comes in the form of increasing policy “warnings” that South Africa in future will tie

its tariff policy much more closely to its development needs. In an implicit criticism of the

rapid and deep liberalisation of South African trade in the 1990s, the Department of Trade and

Industry (DTI) has started issuing warnings that “South Africa will be resolute in using tariffs

to defend domestic industry and support industrial development” (cited in Creamer, 2017; see

also Dube and Mandigora 2012). In his pronouncements on this matter (February 2017) the

DTI Minister did add that South Africa cannot afford to become “overly protectionist,” but

pointed out that South Africa will no longer be a push-over when it comes to trade policies

and trade remedies” (cited in Creamer 2017). Above, I noted that South Africa has as yet not

been a complainant in a single WTO dispute resolution proceedings. Judging by the

Minister’s words, it would seem that from 2017 onwards, South Africa will be ready to resort

to that type of remedy if it deems its own industrial interests to be at stake. Part of this can be

regarded as South Africa’s response to growing global protectionist trends that came to a head

with the BREXIT vote in the UK and the election of President Trump in the USA. However,

the decision to align tariff policy closer with national industrial policy dates back to

2012/2013 (DTI 2013).

The third manifestation of South Africa’s sovereignist turn is a pattern of voting in the UN

that shows an increasing hesitancy to criticise states for behaviour that could be construed as

breaches of human rights and other international liberal norms. Again, this sovereignist turn

did not originate with the Zuma presidency, but had gradually been gestating in the 2000s in

23

contrast with South Africa’s early commitment to the promotion of human rights, which the

Mandela presidency elevated to a specific aim of the new South Africa’s foreign policy. In

1998, South Africa’s National Plan of Action for the Promotion and Protection of Human

Rights (NAP) was submitted to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

and emphasized that all human rights were “‘universal, indivisible and interdependent’” (cited

in Graham 2016: 63). Over the next decade, South Africa’s approach to the matter

increasingly became ambiguous (Jordaan 2014). As Graham (2016) shows, South Africa’s

policy on the international promotion of human rights continues to be an evolutionary

learning process, in which a broader range of interests/forces came to the fore than in the

heady, single-mindedness of the early post-apartheid days of the 1990s. South Africa

continues to be quite consistent in voting for and promoting thematic human rights concerns

in various UN bodies, including the right to development that has become a theme of its

membership of the Human Rights Council (HRC; member since 2014). However, in both its

terms as non-permanent member of the UNSC (2007-2008; 2011-2012), and in its voting

behaviour in the UN General Assembly Third Committee and the HRC, South Africa is

increasingly hesitant to support country-specific resolutions that could be construed as

interference in the domestic affairs of member states, or that manifest a broad interpretation of

the “interventionist” terms of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. South Africa’s policy aims at

squaring competing values: promotion and protection of human rights to give effect to the

normative exceptionalism that the country continues to claim, and at the same opposing

attempts by Western nations to weaken norms pertaining to non-interference, territorial

integrity and sovereignty. Human rights remain a bone of contention in the UN system, and

while this battle is not of South Africa’s making, its very legitimacy as a spokesperson for,

and its aim of becoming a permanent UNSC member on behalf of Africa, are dependent on its

credentials as an opponent of liberalism of the interfering kind (Jordaan 2012). As far as the

24

latter is concerned, South Africa (for most of the time) consistently found common ground

with the BRICs (Ferdinand 2014) Its decision in 2016 to withdraw from the Rome Statute that

established the International Criminal Court (ICC), in line with a general African disquiet

about the perceived anti-African bias of the ICC, should also be interpreted as a manifestation

of South Africa’s growing enthusiasm for a sovereignist approach to global affairs. The

decision to leave the ICC was rescinded in 2017, though, after a South African court found it

to be unconstitutional and illegal (Torchia 2017).

3. How successful was the BRICS experiment?

The previous section argued that South Africa’s profile domestically and in terms of global

governance has changed markedly in the last decade, away from that of a middle-power that

embraces liberal economic policies and attempts to build bridges between established

industrialised states and aspiring industrialising states. In its place has emerged an aspiring

regional power, focusing on how its role in Africa and the world can contribute to the

consolidation and deepening of the developmental state model of national development.

BRICS membership was intended to contribute to securing South Africa’s status as Africa’s

regional power, and to assist in the restructuring of the South African economy. Since 2014,

the latter goal has increasingly been couched in terms of a new slogan, namely “radical

economic transformation” (Bhorat et al. 2017). What this means is as yet not clear, but there

is evidence that points to a coordinated attempt by the Zuma Presidency to secure, both

through legal and dubious means, a form of patron-client control over crucial state-owned

25

enterprises (in particular the Electricity Commission –ESKOM, and the railways - Transnet),

state procurement channels, and strategic parts of the mining sector. Zuma has also been staff

the state sector with a number of preferred clients, while getting rid of opponents, such as the

highly-respected Minister of Finance (Pravin Gordhan) who was unceremoniously sacked in

April 2017. Ostensibly, all of the above is done in order to promote Black ownership of and

participation in the national economy, but for some observers it is clear that it actually is

geared towards benefitting a select group of cronies around Zuma, and a small section of the

emerging Black business class in South Africa. The degree to which BRICS membership

plays into this strategy of “state capture” (Bhorat et al. 2017) is not fully transparent, but it is

obvious that the BRICS connection was instrumental in “securing” a large and lucrative

nuclear energy deal with the Russians. One of the reasons that President had a falling out with

his previous Minister of Finances was that the latter was strongly opposed to this type of

dubious “deal making”. Although Mr Gordhan finds himself in the political wilderness (in

May 2017), his opposition to the nuclear deal has been vindicated by a court ruling that

instructed the President to follow transparent tender procedures and submit the allocation of

the right to build new nuclear reactors in South Africa to Parliament (Cotterill 2017).

Six years is not a long time in the development trajectory of a country, and it is too soon to

draw any firm conclusions about the longer-term effects of BRICS membership, and the

sovereignist turn described above, on South Africa’s domestic situation. There are indications,

though, that the trends traced above have not assisted in making South Africa a more

inclusive social order, despite all the words that have been spilled on this elusive goal since

the late 2000s. I rely on the notion of inclusiveness as defined by Ranieri and Ramos (2013).

They make a distinction between inclusivess of participation and the inclusiveness of sharing

in the benefits of economic growth. The first can be traced by the International Labour

26

Organisation’s indicator of the employment-to-total (available) labour force, expressed as a

percentage. The second can be measured as the head-count poverty rate, that is, the portion of

the population that find themselves in poverty as a percentage of the total population. In

addition, a measure of income inequality can also be used to trace the second dimension of

inclusivity.

<<Table 2 here>>

By the time that South Africa joined the BRICS, the economy grew at a rate that kept pace

with population growth, and recorded a GDP per capita growth rate of 1.5 per cent in 2010

(after the slump in 2009 due to the global financial crisis), and 1.7 per cent in 2011. Since

2012, this growth rate has contracted markedly and has been negative since 2015 (see Table 2

for available summary economic statistics). As a result, the employment rate has crept up to

beyond 26% by 2016. Young South Africans are particularly affected by persistent high

levels of unemployment. According to Moody’s (Laing 2017), unemployment amongst the

34-year old and younger amounted to 48.6% in the third quarter of 2016, and 65.5% among

those younger than 24 years (excluding students). Festus, Kasongo, Moses and Yu (2016)

find that the largest concentration of the unemployed is among young, poorly-educated black

residents of rural Gauteng, which is the mining and industrial heartland of South Africa.

Unemployment also signals that a sizeable portion of the black population remains excluded

from suitable education that would prepare them for formal employment. However,

educational imbalances are not the only determinant of unemployment. High unemployment

in post-apartheid SA is related to (a) the continual shrinkage of the non-mineral tradeable

sector and manufacturing in particular (see Figure 1 and Table 2, and Rodrik 2008), and (b) to

27

the rigidities of the labour market. Manufacturing, as a percentage of GDP, has declined from

around 20 per cent in the mid-1990s to about 13 per cent in 2015. This places a structural

constraint on the ability of the economy to absorb newcomers to the labour force. Other

labour-market rigidities include the role of organised labour and of business management.

The former is a labour aristocracy, and one of the alliance partners of the ruling ANC, and

keeps upward pressure on wages, including the (likely) introduction of a minimum wage.

Management/business responds to rising wages by increasing productivity and shedding

unskilled labour, thus exacerbating unemployment (Seekings and Nattrass, 2015: 232).

BRICS membership exacerbated the imbalances captured by Table 2 - primarily by increasing

South Africa’s long-term structural vulnerability and inhibiting job creation/employment

growth in the non-mineral tradable sector. Minerals account for about a quarter of total South

African merchandise exports, up from about 10 per cent in the mid 1990s. This dependence

on mineral exports, and South Africa’s exposure to China, are points of vulnerability, not

strength. China takes 10 per cent of South African exports, and is the country’ largest single

export market. Global demand for South Africa’s commodity exports is also largely

determined by China. Sixty per cent of all South Africa’s commodity exports to BRIC

countries in 2015 were minerals, and two-thirds of those went to China alone. It is no

surprise, therefore, that shrinking Chinese demands for commodities reduced imports from

South Africa by a quarter from 2014 to 2015, and at US$30 billion was lower in 2015 than it

was in 2011, having grown by a factor of 8 between 2006 and 2011 (BRICS 2016: 193).

Exposure to SSA, the basis of the “gateway to Africa” selling point, adds to this vulnerability.

SSA accounts for 30 per cent of South Africa’s exports, and most of its FDI assets held

outside China. It is an open question whether the BRICS’s NDB and CRA would be able to

compensate for these vulnerabilities.

28

<<Figure 1 here>>

South Africa’s lack of inclusivity is reflected dramatically in the high, and rising, income

inequality levels (Anand, Kothari and Kumar 2016). Consumption (income) inequality has

increased from 57.8 on a 100-point Gini scale in 2000 to 63.1 in 2009. The consumption share

of the lowest quintile shrunk from 3% to 2.7%, and the share of the middle class – the next

three quintiles – also shrunk by about 4%. The consumption share of the top quintile

increased from 62 to 68%. The most recent income survey (2011) records a Gini of 69 for

disposable income (DI), and a staggering 77 for market income inequality (MII = income

before tax and transfers). The income share of the lowest quintile was 1.54% (DI) and 0.30%

(MII), and the share of the top quintile 74.5% (DI) and 81.4% (MII) respectively (income

surveys reported in UNU-WIDER 2016; see also World Bank 2014). It is clear that South

Africa is having success in reducing net (after tax and transfer) inequality, but that the

structural factors that determine MII (before tax and transfer) inequality contribute to keeping

South Africa amongst the group of most unequal states in the world (Woolard et al. 2015;

World Bank 2014).

Thanks to a range of fiscal interventions, in the form of social assistance cash transfer

programmes, poverty rates have declined markedly since 1994. Most of these have their

origins after 1996 when the state compensated for its turn to an orthodox neoliberal

macroeconomic strategy (GEAR – see Table 1) by increasing cash transfers to vulnerable

groups, reaching as many as 17 million South Africans in 2017, at a cost of more than

ZAR10bn per month. Such social assistance is the main source of income for the majority of

poor households in the country. Fiscal redistribution – stimulated by democratisation

29

(Seekings and Nattrass 2015) has been a success, and by 2011 (which was when the last

census took place) lifted almost 4 million people out of poverty. Between 2006 and 2011, the

percentage of households whose income fall below the national poverty line decreased from

57 per cent to 46 per cent (see Seekings and Nattrass 2015 on different poverty measures and

findings). In 2011 alone, fiscal transfers reduced extreme poverty (income below $1.25 a day)

from 35% (market income) to 17% (disposable, after tax and transfer income) (World Bank

2014). Whether such fiscal largesse is sustainable is an open question, though, and a long-

term study by the South African Treasury warns that a growth rate of at least 3 per cent is

required to continue paying for it (Ferreira 2015). As Table 2 shows, South Africa last

achieved that rate of growth in 2008. Currently, the state is running a fiscal deficit, state

borrowing is increasing, and there is a long-term current-account imbalance. This is set to

worsen in view of the downgrade of South Africa sovereign credit rating to junk status by

credit-rating agencies Fitch and Standard and Poor’s in April 2017, with Moody’s

contemplating a similar move. In the absence of sustained and inclusive economic growth

based on renewed industrialisation of the South African economy (Jonas 2017), more than the

current 17 million South Africans (out of a total of 52 million) will be dependent on cash

transfers just to maintain a basic standard of living, and there is no guarantee that the state

will be able to afford it.

Conclusion

Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa form an exclusive club, but not in the sense that

they will never want to spoil a good acronym by allowing other states to join. Rather, they are

exclusivist, in the sense that the overall configuration of their political, social and economic

institutions systematically excludes or marginalises significant segments of their populations,

30

each in their own way (but see Alston et al. 2016 on Brazil). Using a typology popularised by

a recent prominent strand of neo-institutionalism, they are “mature limited access orders”

(North et al. 2013). Limited access orders are characterised by elite rent-seeking pacts, which

serve to co-opt those with the capacity to violently challenge the status quo. As elite pacts,

they limit the access of non-elites to existing institutions, and new organisations are allowed

only to the extent that they serve to maintain or strengthen the elite pacts. Politics, and a range

of patron-client relations determine access. In mature limited access orders, the dominance of

an elite-based overall political arrangement coincides with some seemingly inclusive

institutions and norms, such as competitive elections, a market economy, functioning legal

systems and relatively free media. Overall, and due to the specific ways in which some

seemingly inclusive institutions operate, they continue to marginalise sizeable sections of

their populations. In South Africa, despite the exemplary liberal democratic credentials of its

1996 Constitution, an strong independent media and legal system, and a diversified market

economy, social and labour-market institutions conspire to exclude systematically as many as

a quarter to a third of the population from the material and psychological benefits enjoyed by

the more fortunate.

This chapter argued that the exclusivist credentials of post-apartheid South Africa have

become more evident in recent years, and that this trend has largely coincided with South

Africa’s membership of the BRICS group since 2010. It also coincides with a “sovereignist”

turn in South African foreign political and economic relations in which important dimensions

of the global liberal order are challenged in favour of an emphasis on national development

priorities and resistance to some liberal cosmopolitan values and practices. I deliberately used

the term “coincide” to link these domestic and foreign policy trends to avoid assuming

causality while the mutual influences of events and trends are diffused, dispersed, and subject

31

to feedback loops. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence to sustain a coherent tale about a

country that originally set itself the goal of contributing to global change, and thus becoming

an attractive (for various reasons) partner for others who also have an interest in global

change. It then hitched its own fortunes – and specifically the fortunes of a favoured elite

around the figure of President Zuma, to those other “emerging powers”, and found itself

changed in the process. South Africa gained considerable respect in the 1990s and early 2000s

as a global mediator and champion of the cause of the developing South, although ambiguity

was not absent from that role (Jordaan 2012). By 2017, though, this respect is dissipating as it

becomes clear how the aspirations of being a regional power, combined with declining

governance standards domestically, is transforming this BRICS member. Whether this makes

South Africa less attractive as a member to the other BRICs, remains to be seen.

Want to know more?

Three recent contributions to the literature on South Africa are highly recommended. The first

is a report by the “State Capacity Research Group” under the title Betrayal of the Promise:

How South Africa is Being Stolen (Bhorat 2017). It reveals the murky world of the patron-

client network that President Zuma and his cronies have constructed in an attempt to

undermine the Constitutional state in South Africa and to redirect state capacities for their

own sectarian purposes. Mzukisi Qobo and Prince Mashele’s book The Fall of the ANC: What

Next? (Qobo and Mashele 2017) analyses the weaknesses that have beset one of Africa’s

oldest and previously most respected national liberation movements, the African National

Congress. Given the prominence of the ANC in South African politics, where it has ruled

unchallenged since 1994, the fortunes of the country are closely linked to those of this

movement/party. Current signs of a rot, spreading from the top, bode ill for the future.

32

Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass’ Policy, Politics and Poverty in South Africa (Seekings

and Nattrass 2015) is the best available account of poverty in South Africa, how policy

initiatives have aimed at dealing with it, and how the labour market, and actors in the labour

market, contribute to excluding a large part of the population from participating fully in a

modern diversified economy.

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Table 1: SOUTH AFRICA TIMELINE

1990 Release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners. 1991 Start of multi-party talks.

President De Klerk repeals remaining apartheid laws, international sanctions lifted. 1994 First democratic SA election. Nelson Mandela elected president. International sanctions lifted. SA takes seat

in UN General Assembly. Launch of the Reconstruction and Development (RDP) economic programme.

1996 Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins hearings on human rights crimes committed by former government and liberation movements during apartheid era. Parliament adopts new constitution. Adoption of Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macro-economic strategy.

1998 SA hosts Non-Aligned Movement Summit. 1999 General elections. Thabo Mbeki becomes 2nd President of post-apartheid SA, after Mandela declined to

stand for a 2nd term. SA joins G-20 as a founding member. SA hosts Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

2000 SA hosts UN AIDS Conference. 2001 SA hosts UN World Conference Against Racism.

New Partnership for Africa’s Development launched and accepted by the African Union. 2002 SA hosts World Summit on Sustainable Development. 2003 6 June 2003, Yashwant Sinha (External Affairs Minister of India), Celso Amorim (Foreign Minister of

Brazil) and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (Foreign Minister of SA) formalize the India Brazil SA (IBSA) Dialogue Forum by signing “Brasilia Declaration”.

2004 Ruling ANC wins landslide general election. Thabo Mbeki begins a second term as president. 2005 President Mbeki sacks his deputy, Jacob Zuma, due to charges of corruption. GEAR macro-economic

programme replaced by Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA (ASGISA). 2006 Former deputy president Jacob Zuma acquitted of rape charges, reinstated as deputy leader of ANC. 2007 Zuma elected chairman of the ANC.

SA elected for first of two terms on UN Security Council (2007-2008). SA hosts the G-20 Secretariat.

2008 President Mbeki resigns over allegations that he interfered in Zuma’s corruption case. ANC deputy leader Kgalema Motlanthe chosen by parliament as president.

2009 Jacob Zuma elected president. Economy goes into recession for first time in 17 years 2010 SA hosts the World Cup football tournament.

New Growth Path replaces ASGISA as macro-economic programme. 2010 SA invited to join BRICS group of states 2011 President Zuma attends the 3rd BRICS in Sanya, China.

COP 17 (United Nations Climate Change Conference) held in Durban. SA elected for second term on UN Security Council (2011-2012). 5th IBSA Summit hosted by SA in Durban.

2012 Police open fire on striking workers at platinum mine in Marikana, killing 34, injuring 78, and arresting 200. President Zuma re-elected as leader of the ANC. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ex Health and Foreign Affairs Minister elected as Chairperson of African Union Commission.

2013 Nelson Mandela passes away. SA hosts the 5th BRICS Summit in Durban. Government introduces a new macro-economic programme, the National Development Plan (NDP)-2030.

2014 SA’s Fifth Democratic Election. President Zuma elected for 2nd term. 2015 Government receives unwelcome international attention over allegations of bribery to disgraced

international footballing body FIFA to secure 2010 World Cup, and allowing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to visit despite International Criminal Court arrest warrant over genocide and war-crimes charge

2016 Supreme Court rules President Zuma violated the constitution by not repaying public money used to improve his private residence. SA announces intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

2017 SA revokes decision to withdraw from ICC after court declares it “unconstitutional and illegal” President Zuma dismisses widely-respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, leading to the country's credit rating being cut to “junk” status by some credit-rating agencies.

Table 2: SOUTH AFRICA - SELECTED SOCIO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS, 2008-2017

Year Real GDP

growth

Real GDP per capita

growth

Overall fiscal

balance

Current account

im-balance (% of GDP)

Inward FDI, % of GDP

Gross govern-

ment debt

Contribu-tion of manu-

facturing to GDP

Metals and ores as

percent of merchandise

exports

Contribution of services to GDP

Gini of dispo-sable

income

Unem-ployment rate (% of potential

workforce) 2008 3.2 1.8 -7.2 3.44 27.2 15.9 29.1 65.5 22.7

2009 -1.5 -2.9 -4.1 2.58 31.6 15.0 29.3 66.6 63.1 23.7

2010 3.0 1.5 -2.0 0.98 35.3 14.4 28.3 67.2 24.7

2011 3.2 1.7 -2.3 0.99 38.8 13.3 31.0 67.5 69.0 24.7

2012 2.2 0.7 -4.0 -5.0 1.17 41.0 13.1 27.7 67.9 25.0

2013 2.2 0.6 -3.9 -5.7 2.24 44.0 13.2 29.9 67.8 24.6

2014 1.5 -0.1 -3.7 -5.4 1.65 46.9 13.3 25.9 68.0 25.1

2015 1.3 -0.4 -3.9 -4.3 0.48 49.8 13.5 24.0 67.8 25.4

2016 0.1 -1.6 -3.7 -4.1 51.5 13.2 68.7 26.1

2017 1.1 -0.6 -3.6 -4.8 52.6 26.7

Note: Figures for 2017 are projections

Sources World Development Indicators 2017; IMF 2016b

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Figure 1: The Decline of Manufacturing and Unemployment in South Africa, 1990-2015

Source: World Development Indicators 2017