Civilization and South African Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy Analysis (2010) 6, 133–146

The New Legitimacy and International Legitimation: Civilization and South African Foreign Policy1 Derick Becker College of St Benedict ⁄ St John’s University In the years since the end of apartheid, South Africa has emerged from its status as an international pariah to a full fledged member of the international community. Riding a wave of new found legitimacy bolstered by a heroic myth surrounding President Mandela, South Africa began to rethink its role in the world. Perhaps more than Mandela, however, former President Thabo Mbeki laid claim to the title of Africa’s spokesman to the world. Mbeki, through his African Renaissance, cast himself as the embodiment of the modern, postcolonial African blending African tradition and symbolism with the rhetoric of free markets and good governance. What this paper argues is that Mbeki’s Renaissance highlights both what constitutes legitimate policies and behavior and the role of legitimacy and legitimation itself in international relations.

In the years since the end of apartheid, South Africa has emerged from its status as an international pariah to a fully fledged and admired member of the international community. Riding a wave of new found legitimacy bolstered by a heroic myth surrounding President Mandela, South Africa began to rethink its role in the world. The foreign policy of Mandela’s Rainbow Nation, however, draws as much upon the rhetoric and ideas of the struggle against apartheid (see Hentz 2005) as it does the global neoliberal ascendancy; Mandela saw no distinction between the reconciliation necessary at home and the necessity of reconciliation internationally in an unequal world (Sampson 1999:547). Perhaps more than Mandela, however, former President Thabo Mbeki laid claim to the title of Africa’s spokesman to the world. Mbeki cast himself as the embodiment of the modern, postcolonial African blending African tradition and symbolism with the rhetoric of free markets and good governance. Such themes would come to define his and South Africa’s foreign policy. As the architect of the lofty, if vague, African Renaissance, he produced both a set of ideas for a new Africa and a discourse to engage the world on terms equally syncretic and powerful. As President of South Africa he continued and propelled the government’s free-market oriented policies further entrenching the ideas into the apparatus of the state. Internationally, he took his Renaissance and worked with global leaders, particularly former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, to create NEPAD (the New Partnership for Africa’s Development), an organization that seeks to spread democracy 1 Author’s notes: This paper has benefited immeasurably from many conversations over the past few years but special thanks goes to Jennifer Sterling-Folker, Mark Boyer, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, and Richard Vengroff. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights and Heather Igoe for research assistance.

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The New Legitimacy and International Legitimation

and development in Africa and greater integration of the continent and the global economy. While Mbeki’s Renaissance has had a limited impact in terms of shifting the politics of Africa as a whole, it has tapped into a new discourse on interstate relations. It highlights both what constitutes legitimate, normatively accepted policies and discourse while shedding light on the role of legitimacy and the processes of international legitimation per se. What this paper seeks to examine is the emergence of South Africa’s foreign policy during the transition and immediate post-transition period, what it is, and how it is part of a new global discourse of legitimacy. What I hope to shed light on, in short, is the clear confluence of domestic and international discourses that become evident in South Africa’s foreign relations and how this is part of a broader, global discourse on the nature of legitimate state behavior. Taylor and Nel (2002) once opined that South Africa’s foreign policy adventures, particularly its role in NEPAD and the reformed African Union (AU), represented the failure of the socialist rhetoric of the past. Instead the state- and by association all developing states- was engaging the developed world on its own terms. This is not something I entirely disagree with but, as will be shown, it fails to appreciate the syncretic discourse that blends the domestic with the international. The global embrace of neoliberalism is not simply economic either. As a set of ideas and discourse it latches the economic to democracy and redefines freedom and the relationship between state and society. South Africa’s foreign policy is embedded in this larger discourse of freedom and democracy aimed at creating a continental renaissance that is simultaneously traditional and modern, African and Western. To suggest this is mere adoption of words is to liken foreign policy to window-dressing (which a cynic may say is true of any state); we’ll say whatever we must to those with power. There is ample evidence to suggest that the foreign policy that emerged in the post-apartheid era is very much South African but that it also represents the results of interaction on a global stage. Curiously, this new global neoliberal discourse has, as will be shown, its antecedents in the civilizational discourse of the nineteenth century. Civilization, however, ceased to be a direct component of this discourse as it became intertwined with the rise of development theory. Modernity, modernization, development replaced civilization yet the hierarchy of civilizations (Strang 1996) was merely replaced by an academic categorization of developed and nondeveloped. Its latent normative assumptions have been replaced with categories embodied in an epistemology of economism creating an ‘‘objective’’ view of reality. The normative has shifted toward the idea of freedom but an individual freedom; it is one that rests comfortably within a market oriented view of the state and individual freedom of the market (see Ferguson 2006). If, as Strang (1996) argued, states engaged in an act of legitimation and delegitimation regarding what would become colonial interstate relations, the neoliberal body of thought and its basis in objective social science categorization shapes the relations among states today. But while this may be the content, it does not explain how it becomes part of a state’s body of policies, including its foreign policies. Following Jackson’s (2006) lead, I argue that legitimacy and acts of legitimation explain how states adopt and adapt a certain worldview that contributes to the formation of policy, including the broad strokes of foreign policy. Acts of legitimation, however, need not be overtly legitimating or even an act. Policies, language, and specific acts are, in the course of interstate relations, seen as justified or justifiable- in a word, legitimate- when they can be made sense of according to a dominant set of ideas and beliefs about what are justifiable, legitimate policies and behavior. Legitimacy and legitimation are, as such, socially determined. Claims of legitimation ‘‘are public, in that they participate in a ‘social and intersubjective rather than … collective or shared’ discursive space’’ [italics original] (Laffey and Weldes quoted in Jackson 2002:454). The result is a shared language

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used by all that shapes the debate by defining the terms of debate (Jackson 2002). The dynamics of interstate power and the dominance of a singular discourse, as such, become important components in understanding the milieu in which policy is formulated. States employ the discursive tropes, metaphors, and ‘‘rhetorical commonplaces’’ (see Weldes 1999) resonant in a given context to justify behaviors and policies (see also Kratochwil 1989). ‘‘In order to determine why particular articulations ‘resonate’,’’ Jackson (2002:454) argues, ‘‘and others do not, it is necessary to relate those articulations to the broader discursive contexts in which they occur and upon which they draw in order to advance their claims.’’ In the case of South Africa’s foreign policy—or any state’s for that matter—this necessitates an examination of both the domestic and international context. This is a deviation from typical analysis, which generally maintains analysis at a single level (for example, domestic or international). Thus what emerges as a byproduct of this paper is an argument in favor of analysis that places states, policies, institutional development, etc., in context, which is neither purely domestic nor international (see also Bayart 1993). That context is in part defined by the extant relations among states and the discourse that underpins, justifies, and molds and defines it. At the turn of the century Africa’s political problems, its poverty, its underdevelopment, and so on have gained renewed attention among developed states. From the Jubilee and Millennium goals to the growing attention to debt relief by the governments of the G7, the developed world has sought to re-engage Africa. This re-engagement, however, is defined in a particular way within a given discourse of economism, inevitable economic globalization and good governance. Mbeki’s Renaissance, then, must be seen from this perspective for as a discourse it blends well with how the West ‘‘sees’’ and understands Africa’s problems. When President Sarkozy of France gave a speech in Dakar, Senegal in the Summer of 2007, the themes of the developed world’s new engagement were baldly apparent for what they were- Africa on Europe’s terms. It is noteworthy that President Mbeki was alone among Africa’s leaders to applaud the French president amid an otherwise sea of criticism from Africa’s leaders. Indeed, Sarkozy even invoked Mbeki’s famed African Renaissance, though without recognizing its author. This incident, however, has two implications for our purposes here. It highlights the new legitimacy that shapes the developed world’s view of Africa while shedding light on Mbeki’s own discursive revolution within South Africa and beyond. While it might be useful to analyze these currents separately, they are, arguably, quite intertwined. Mbeki not only set the terms of debate in South Africa, he genuinely engaged the world in a discourse that is both African and, for lack of a better term, Western. Africa and Post-apartheid Foreign Policy In an article in Foreign Affairs a year prior to the first post-apartheid elections, Mandela (1993) laid out his vision for South Africa’s foreign policy. This vision in many ways sets the groundwork for a grander vision of South Africa’s role on the continent and South Africa’s role in integrating the continent and the world. It is a vision, what Mandela would call South Africa’s African destiny, that would later coalesce into a roughly coherent discourse under Mbeki that we have come to call the African Renaissance. The idea that South Africa should play a prominent, if at times undefined role, in Africa is not new. In 1940, then Prime Minister Jan Smuts argued that the country was in a unique position to lead Africa into the modern world. Even under apartheid the government sought on many occasions to find and define a role for the state on the continent. Apartheid made any such involvement unlikely and the state’s most active involvement was

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largely disruptive as it sought to destabilize regimes that supported the ANC. But the post-apartheid world led to a renewed search to define South Africa’s place in the continent, often resting on the long held notion of the country’s uniqueness. Post-apartheid South Africa’s uniqueness, however, was its human rights struggle and peaceful resolution to apartheid. South Africa’s history gave it special lessons that could be shared throughout the continent, indeed the world. South Africa would have a foreign policy led by idealism instead of the cynicism of realpolitik (Sampson 1999:548). It is this pairing of history, human rights, and reconciliation that would shape Mandela’s earliest intervention in continental affairs. The tone was set: South Africa would lead Africa into the new millennium. Vale and Maseko (1998) have noted, however, that another, persistent, if subtle, theme is one of modernization with South Africa leading the way. Mandela’s foreign policy article in many ways echos the theme of bringing Africa into a modern world but without using the term as such. What is striking about his view is that it appears to be a synthesis of ideology and pragmatism that meshed easily with the rising post-cold war rhetoric of democracy and interdependence. Both are ideas that consume the vast majority of the article. In defining the ANC’s post-apartheid struggle as a struggle to unify all of South Africa’s diverse peoples within a democratic nation, he argues that this ‘‘political credo’’ necessitates a humane and humanitarian foreign policy. South Africa’s foreign policy would be resolutely focused on democracy, human rights, and greater participation in global affairs (87). But Mandela also saw the post-cold war world as a divisive one threatened by a growing gap between the developed and developing world and one where Africa was being further marginalized (88). Interdependence as a physical interconnectedness and metaphysical global community did not necessarily coincide. Great divisions existed alongside the global neoliberal rhetoric of unity. The post-apartheid state, he argued, must rise above the divisiveness that has split the continent and the globe and work to bring about global harmony. In many ways we find parallels between Mandela’s Rainbow Nation within South Africa and this vision of global unity. This is lofty rhetoric to be sure but it is also matched by an ideologically informed pragmatism that hones in on the economic centre of the neoliberal order. The problem of global inequity opens Mandela’s foreign policy discussion where he describes economic development and international economic cooperation as one of the pillars of the state’s future foreign policy (87). The greatest challenge facing South Africa is, he argues, much the same as that facing the world: gross inequality. While invoking interdependence and the need to integrate the country into the international economy, Mandela rather deftly links inequality with human rights in his discussion of economics. This is quite in line with the evolution in thinking that came to redefine economic development and social justice in liberal economic terms. In the short twelve pages of the article, Mandela manages to invoke the ANC’s struggle against apartheid as the greatest human rights campaign in modern history, highlight global inequality and African poverty as human rights issues, and point to South Africa’s now unique moral (and, it should not be forgotten, economic) position to engage the continent and the world on these issues. Economics and government accountability (that is, democracy) are the points around which the neoliberal discourse of the twinned free markets and freedom and the ANC’s own discourse on social justice would converge. Mandela’s ideas cannot be analyzed distinct from either of these domestic and international currents of thought. What emerges is the slow drift toward a syncretic discourse that would develop around the notion of good governance that resonated with a diverse audience. The discourse of good governance becomes a loose set of ideas combining economics, trade, accountability, and democracy into a discourse of legitimate state behavior. Until now we have failed to appreciate how much this

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has become the sine qua non of membership in the global community. Yet Mandela also knows that Africa as a whole is not part of this community empirically or existentially. Nor does he imply that to be a member of this community that Africa must abandon its traditions (92). While the lofty rhetoric may be dismissed as just that, in concrete terms the Mandela presidency saw South Africa engage in a wide range of humanitarian engagements with the continent, such as its active engagement in the peace process in Sudan. The world too seemed to be re-engaging the continent and this re-engagement engendered questions over what it meant to be African. As Ahluwalia (2002) noted, President Clinton’s first visit to Africa set off a serious debate among Africa’s illuminati over what it meant to be African in the global order that was emerging. The question, as Ahluwalia saw it, was whether Africa’s relations were in part defined by a discourse of Africanism2 and how best to begin the process of redefining this image (266). This search for an authentic identity devoid of the Eurocentric representations of Africans, he argues, is not new and can be traced back as far as the ideas of negritude through to the PanAfricanism of the mid twentieth century. Identity is forged in relationships but it also conditions relationships, as such the search for an authentic identity is an attempt to redefine that relationship. Historically the problem has been, as critics of negritude note (see Abiola 1981; Ahluwalia 1999), that such new identities invariably cede much ground to a European episteme and, thus, implicitly recognize and legitimate the basis off which the Eurocentric view of Africa is built (see Mudimbe 1994, 1988). Each attempt at forging a new identity has often been aimed at unifying Africa under a single identity, a single civilization (for example, Pan-Africanism). But in the process, as Mudimbe (1988) acknowledges, even an identity premised upon an ‘‘African civilization’’ juxtaposes itself with, and implicitly reifies the very idea of civilization, which is itself a product of European thought. The terms of debate, as such, were still being set by the very entity these thinkers (for example, Senghor, Cesaire) sought to distance themselves from. The problem, according to Mudimbe (1988), among others, is that our images and understanding of Africa are far removed from the civilizational discourse of the nineteenth century and are, rather, ‘‘objectified’’ and reified as knowledge and truth not as normative concepts. Arguably, Mandela did not seek to create a new African identity or discourse within which one might be formed. But we should avoid the temptation to read into his discussion any discursively ceded ground. The pragmatism evident in his writing recognizes how the world is, not necessarily the normative assumptions about how it ought to be. Indeed, in many ways by engaging the world on its terms (for example, human rights, democracy, interdependence and free trade)3. Mandela is seeking to open space for an active engagement on not only fair terms but African terms. But his thoughts and the ideological currents within the ANC that propelled a re-engagement with the continent opened up the possibility of a new discourse on Africa. In many ways this challenge was taken up not by Mandela but by his successor, Thabo Mbeki and his African Renaissance. Creating the Modern African: Mbeki and the African Renaissance Mandela’s imprint on South Africa’s foreign policy was a commitment to multilateralism and a commitment to democracy and human rights. Both themes find their place in the further elaboration of South Africa’s foreign affairs under the Mbeki administration. Like Mandela, Mbeki saw poverty—particularly the global poverty between nations, which he saw as a form of disempowerment—as human 2 3

In this particular context we might think of this similarly to Edward Said’s Orientalism. See, for instance, his discussion of trade and reciprocity (Mandela 1993:96).

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rights issues and intimately linked to the processes of globalization. But for Mbeki, globalization could not be avoided it must be embraced for what it is (Mbeki 2004). The solution, however, was not to turn our backs but rather to embrace the spirit of a globalized and globalizing world. The problem, as Mbeki saw it, was that the global village had yet to create the global institutions to govern it and to roll back the entrenchment of the interests of the powerful at the expense of the disempowered global poor (Mbeki 2003a). Mbeki could be as scathing toward this globalized world as much as he argued that it was inevitable. In his embrace and criticism of globalization, however, we find the emergent themes that would come to shape Mbeki’s own imprint on South Africa’s foreign policy. Like Mandela, Mbeki wrestled with crafting an idealistic foreign policy while being pragmatic as well. His foreign policy, as Nathan (2005:362) notes, ‘‘embraces an ambitious continental and global agenda that has idealist, internationalist and emancipatory tendencies.’’ His idealism manifested itself in foreign policy via the themes of modernization (read democracy and development) and Africanism. Such idealism was paired with an equally strong anti-imperialist stance (Nathan 2005) and a need to move out from Mandela’s shadow, the latter of which would play a strong, if implicit, role in shaping Mbeki’s foreign policy. In particular he was, as Gevisser notes, attempting to avoid the personal and continental Afro-pessimism of the ‘‘one good native’’ syndrome. Gevisser (2009) argued that to Mbeki, Mandela was viewed by the world as the one good African capable of running a modern state. But while this may have had a personal impact, I argue it also manifested itself in Mbeki’s Renaissance and his emphasis on continent wide government reform; Africa as a whole must prove that it has good leaders. This point provides subtle insight into Mbeki’s Africanist and Modernist foreign policy themes. It may also explain the at times paradoxical application of Mbeki’s foreign policy most evident in his failure to condemn the actions of Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe. As Nathan (2005) notes, Mbeki’s Africanism and anti-imperialism led him to silence critics of Zimbabwe as racist and imperialist and wholly ignore his stated commitment to democracy and good governance. Such inconsistencies, however, ought not detract us from the fact that Mandela’s democracy and multilateralism remained central to Mbeki’s thinking on what Africa must do in the face of a globalizing world with Africa at the margins. The continent must work together; but it must also work together to reform the image of a corrupt and backward continent. The practical difficulties of applying such a policy is no less difficult than the ideological difficulty of grappling with a vision that is both modern and traditional. But one thing was clear: Africa must commit itself to government reform and democracy; it must commit to good governance. It must become modern but not abandon its traditions. To this end NEPAD and its efforts to promote democracy, corporate and government good governance, and peer review is central to bringing the continent, and South Africa, into the global economy. Africa needs, according to Mbeki, a legitimate ‘‘political order and system of governance’’ to engage the ‘‘global processes that characterize the global economy.’’ But this should not, he further argued, come at the expense of African traditions and identity. Indeed, for Mbeki the world had long held Africa in low regard, a place for raw goods and no more, and Africa’s leaders had for too long been complicit in sustaining this image. NEPAD, in his view, was a ‘‘subjective response to the ideological internalization of conditions of inferiority … and a metaphorical break with Africa’s own complicity in its oppression’’ (Mbeki 2003a,b). In a sense, then, Mbeki is pushing against what he saw as a global and continental malaise of Afro-pessimism that was holding African states back. What was needed was a continent wide, collective effort to engage the world without leaving behind African values and traditions while also

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laying the groundwork for economic modernization. What was needed was a new vision for the continent that would propel the economies and cultures of Africa into a modern world of their choosing. The result was the African Renaissance. It is difficult to grasp what the Renaissance is in concrete terms. It is more of a vision than a set of ideas and policies for it alludes to a common African destiny and hints at a common identity. It is a product of a particular historical context and a particular post-cold war discursive shift on what it means to be part of the global community- even what that community means. It is a discourse that embraces democracy, integration, and a sense of modernity in that it seeks to define the modern African. But it is also quite evidently South African. As Vale and Maseko (1998:276) rightly note, the collapse of apartheid brought South Africa to the cusp of what Mandela called the nation’s African destiny. It also owes much to the democratic nature of the end of apartheid and Mandela’s unusual international moral standing. ‘‘The international standing of Nelson Mandela … added to the allure of South Africa’s enhanced role in Africa. If these circumstances fostered the notion of African Renaissance, it was the lyrical appeal of Mbeki’s imagery which turned the obvious, the commonsensical, into a tryst with history.’’ The Renaissance, thus, emerges as a particular discourse, a product of the post-cold war context of dominant liberalism. But it is not merely an African liberalism for it also seeks to spell out a sense of African destiny and identity even while it never really escapes the discursive glow of resurgent international liberalism. Indeed, there is much in this discourse that is useful to South Africa’s foreign policy goals.4 On the eve of the ratification of South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, Mbeki gave his now well known ‘‘I am an African’’ speech. In this speech, Mbeki stakes out his claim to an Africanism that embraces the diverse history and context of the continent. In its poetic rhythm and sweeping imagery, Mbeki sees his identity in the very soil of the continent, in the history of slavery and colonialism, and in the diversity of the continent, black and white. With the passage of one image after another comes the bold refrain, I am an African. It was a memorable speech given by a man that up to that point was viewed as a stiff bureaucrat not a man of vision. In many ways, ‘‘I am an African’’ is an attempt to define and not be defined. It neither rejects history nor does it seek to juxtapose African tradition against a European one to justify itself. And yet it is also a bold claim on what it means to be a modern African. This becomes all the clearer as Mbeki began the process of defining the African Renaissance and pursue policies that came from it. If we may say that Mandela’s foreign policy had a moral dimension focused heavily on human rights and democracy, Mbeki’s Renaissance takes off from the practical result of this moralist policy. While South Africa surely pursued a human rights mission in Africa—notably mediating and intervening in a number of conflicts from the Congo to Sudan—it also increased its economic engagement. Mandela decried the economic marginalization of Africa and global inequity generally. Mbeki, as noted above, took the growing interdependence of states as a given and that, however bad ‘‘globalization’’ might be, it was international reality. According to Gumede (2005:198), Mbeki and his supporters believed that interdependence had to be addressed head on; recognize the interdependence of states, and recognize the link between domestic, economic, and foreign policies. What Mbeki called for was greater regional cooperation, attention to the ills of poor governance afflicting African states, and a concerted engagement with the developed world. These themes develop and take shape in

4 Some within the ANC even discussed the Renaissance as a way to not address globalization but roll it back (see African National Congress 1998).

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the Renaissance. Not only would Africa stand proud, it would engage in a bold modernization project. Like Mandela, Mbeki came out of the ideological universe of the ANC and the debate over what apartheid meant and what its end means for South Africa. In an address to the National General Council of the ANC in 2000, Mbeki argued that not only was it the goal of the ANC to end apartheid but to end global apartheid (Mbeki 2000). To do so would require an end to the ‘‘Afro-pessimism’’ that had pervaded the continent (and academic discourse, I might add) and rally around a new vision of Africa’s future (Gumede 2005:199). Mbeki’s Renaissance and his ‘‘I am an African’’ speech was ‘‘aimed at launching South Africa and the rest of Africa into the new millennium through a sort of renewal’’ (Ahluwalia 2002:273). It is striking, however, how much this new vision, while certainly one aimed at reclaiming an African identity, clearly embraced the developed world’s vision of the continent as poorly governed and economically backward. The Renaissance was quite concretely a vision of democracy and good governance. It represents a turning away from the past in some ways while retaining and redefining the modern African. But it recognizes that Africa’s development will only come when the continent unites to collectively engage the developed world. In embracing the basic tenets of the developed world’s discourse, Mbeki was in a better position to challenge it from within.5 The concrete outcomes of this new vision can be seen in NEPAD, South Africa’s battle to shape the African Union (AU) as an African EU, and in the leadership role it took with other developing countries to challenge the developed countries at their own game at the Cancun meeting of the WTO in 2003.6 South Africa has also actively engaged in economic partnerships with its neighboring countries, sought to reduce trade and tariff barriers across southern Africa as a whole, and actively invested in Africa to the tune of tens of billions of rand. Cancun also represented something of an ironic success for South Africa and the developing world in that it showed how a unified front challenging the developed states on their own terms could prove powerful. The embrace of neoliberalism allowed developing states to cry foul at the hypocrisy of the US and EU. While no agreement came from this, that in and of itself demonstrates the ability of developing states to challenge the powerful. While this example is far more global in scope, NEPAD represents something of an institutional African Renaissance. NEPAD’s development and the development of the new AU represent a concrete institutionalization of the ideas of Mbeki’s African Renaissance and South Africa’s ambition to lead the continent in a new direction. Though hardly the result of one person, Mbeki can claim considerable credit for shaping the very purpose of the new AU. Unlike its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the AU does not take as its priority the security and recognition of territorial integrity as its founding principle (cf Jackson and Rosberg 1984). Indeed, the AU is aimed at integrating the continent and seeks greater oversight of intrastate activities, particularly regarding governance. The incorporation of NEPAD into its structure places the AU at the center of good governance on the continent through the peer review process. This process allows member states to undergo a thorough vetting by member states in areas of democracy and corruption. NEPAD is, of course, far more than a mechanism for peer review. It was originally shaped around the ideas of spreading democracy, regional integration, good governance (political, economic, and corporate), and as a mechanism for 5 Gumede (2005) cites a UK Foreign Office briefing stating that while ‘‘they have a new paradigm’’ we are all essentially dancing together (206) but I could not verify his source. 6 This has also led to the more recent IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) dialogue forum that is seeking to foster greater South-South engagement to counter American and European power in the global economy.

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partnership with the developed world keeping in mind the UN’s Millennium Development goals. NEPAD represents a complete adoption of the ideas of good governance by an African institution. While it emphasizes democracy and integration, the economic rationale lies behind the very core of the institution and its goals. By the turn of the century, South Africa, and Mbeki in particular, had come to see that the greatest impediment to economic development on the continent (and, by association, South Africa) was not only poor governance- economic and politicalbut the perception that this was a continental norm (see Department of Trade and Industry 2001). NEPAD thus emerges as a bridge of dialogue between the continent and the developed world premised upon the discourse of good governance. The idea of the African Renaissance, however, allows NEPAD to emerge simultaneously from within an African discourse. According to Griggs (2003:75), the ‘‘‘African Renaissance’ discourse retained the dream of reviving Africa from a legacy of servitude, colonialism and dependency but reversed the strategy. It was one of open engagement with world markets and it fit within the metanarrative of a globalizing world.’’ He further argues that it had a tremendous amount of appeal to Africa’s leaders as a unifying discourse particular to the post-cold war era that would also resonate with the North. It is no accident then that the institutions discussed above came about quite rapidly. Two things are readily apparent apropos of the Renaissance, NEPAD, and AU. First, the discourse and institutions themselves represent an attempt to reclaim and redefine an African identity. It is a continent wide effort with predecessors in Pan-Africanism and Negritude and is resolutely a product of a given context and moment in time. It is the product of the liberal discourse of the post- cold war era. Second, the syncretism of this discourse grants it a certain degree of international legitimacy because it is largely in sync with the world view of the developing world. As liberalism, or neoliberalism to be precise, emerges as a dominant set of ideas and norms, it shapes what constitutes legitimate behavior and what it means to be a legitimate member of the international community. By adopting the discourse of neoliberalism and making it their own, South Africa—and the developing world, for that matter—has embraced this basic world view and the ideas that follow from it. The question that remains, however, is why does it matter and how. This turns on the issue of where legitimacy and worldview fit in shaping interstate relations. The Discourse of Legitimacy For most of the past 50 years or more, scholars of the developing world have often focused on the material legacy of colonialism and, going back further, the material nature of colonialism itself. Yet scholars have recently begun looking at the nature of the colonial (and postcolonial) relationship as not merely material but one premised upon a set of ideas that allowed it to occur in the first place. Even though overt dominance no longer exists, dominant ideas about the nature of interstate behavior exist and shape behavior in turn. In analyzing the origins of African colonization, David Strang has highlighted the discursive maneuvering that occurred around the concept of sovereignty prior to colonization. In the European worldview, states were sovereign and that sovereignty could not be breached. Strang argues, however, that what emerged was a series of intellectual efforts to organize states into a hierarchy of sovereignty with the European state at the top. This ordering was, of course, premised upon a notion of civilized and uncivilized where African states were viewed more as proto-states (Strang 1996). The European state was hierarchically on top, according to Strang, because it had codified laws, courts, and clear apparatuses of state. The case of Latin America is interesting in that Strang argues that it was

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situated on a middle rung of sorts as these states had, at minimum, embraced the idea of the modern European state. They could not, thus, be re-colonized. For Africa, then, European colonists engaged in an act of delegitimation of the sovereignty of their soon to be colonies while simultaneously legitimating the act of colonization itself as a civilizing mission.7 To suggest that this was mere window dressing is to miss the point. Both the English and French perceived their colonial mission in different ways that had profound impacts on the nature of colonization in practice. Crowder’s (1964) well known piece on direct and indirect rule notes just how much each state’s views on the nature of the colonial mission shaped day-to-day governance. However flawed and Eurocentric, France’s mission civilisatrice did shape the nature of the colonial encounter. It also shaped the rise of negritude by both creating the idea of the African as French citizen—and the practical opportunities this brought—and by setting the measure of what constitutes ‘‘civilization’’ itself that early scholars of negritude sought to define themselves by. Civilization itself is at the heart of the delegitimation and legitimation process outlined by Strang (1996). This process was premised upon Hegel’s idea that Africa was a place devoid of history, a nonentity (Hegel 1975). But Strang also traces the trajectory of this thought through decreasingly overt tones to the more subtle modes of legitimation that appear overtly objective and true. He highlights the way in which the rise of nineteenth-century liberal reforms granted a veneer of legitimacy to setting off to Africa to bring the continent the benefits of freedom and governance. The stark contrast between the civilized and uncivilized easily gave way to a moral imperative, the white man’s burden, that propelled and legitimated colonization ultimately creating a discourse devoid of its Hegelian origins. Indeed, missionary and educational work in Africa bear this out (see, respectively Comaroff and Comaroff 1986; West 2002). Education in particular became an area where even the most ardent reformists at home became willing accomplices in the colonial project (see Windel 2006). The history of colonialism is, then, not just material for much of the colonial project rested upon worldviews that sought to legitimate it. The collapse of colonialism, ironically by invoking the European ideas of nationalism, one could argue, might make much of this argument moot. Yet if the discourse that underpinned the colonial relationship became less legitimate in the post war environment thus, as Crawford (2002) suggests, undermining the relationship, then we must ask what discourse emerged to legitimate the new relations. I would argue that interstate relations between the developed and developing world have evolved from one based in modernization theory to one that is premised upon the ideas of good governance today. Both discourses ultimately address and define not only the proper nature of a state but what a developed, modern state is by definition. Both are, at their core, premised upon an ‘‘objective’’ view of reality, which hides any notion that they may be premised upon a Euro-episteme, to use Mudimbe’s term (1988). Civilizational discourse is gone but its basic premise is still present; it still defines the right kind of state and the right kind of behavior. Modernization theory was rightly criticized for its teleology and its implicit Westernization because the measure of the developed state was invariably premised upon the trajectory of Western states themselves. It was, nevertheless, an academically informed body of thought that affected development policy and interstate relations. Good governance is a far more holistic idea- lacking the teleology of modernization theory—linking the political, the structural, and the 7 It is no accident that most African states were not formal colonies but, rather, ‘‘protectorates.’’ Even in delegitimating African sovereignty, European states were still not abandoning the concept, however much they were hypocritically stretching it.

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economic. But it is no less a discourse premised upon right economic and government policies justified by economic modeling and what Gramsican theorists call economism. The economic laws deduced by economists are seen as just that, laws. States defy them at their peril. From this a series of ideas emerge defining what makes a state safe for capital and why certain policies are objectively better than others. This produces a ‘‘regime of order and truth,’’ as Escobar (1995:8) notes, that is ‘‘deepened by economics and development. It is reflected in an objectivist and empiricist stand that dictates that the Third World and its peoples exist ‘out there,’ to be known through theories and intervened upon from the outside.’’ Escobar rightly points out that the very idea of underdevelopment does not emerge until after WWII and is bound up with the ‘‘problematization of poverty’’ as an ‘‘essential trait’’ of the developing world. It is a notion of poverty strictly defined in materialist, economic terms (Escobar 1995:24). Development, then, means economic development, opening space for a narrow focus on what makes states develop. Modernization theory’s obsession with GDP and other macro-economic indicators is indicative of this view. Structural adjustment programs, with their emphasis on restructuring state-society relations, demonstrate the evolution of the field into the socio- political. States in economic trouble, goes the thinking, are making bad economic and governmental choices. Once grasped in this way, research tends to produce knowledge that reifies the initial assumptions about the basic nature of a given problem (see Mitchell 2008). The point to be drawn from this is that ideas about the proper policies of states have long shaped interstate behavior. The move from modernization to good governance represents a significant discursive and behavioral shift. State behavior within this discourse is increasingly legitimated based not on the civilizational discourse of the nineteenth century but on objective social science. But if Escobar is right, then the ways in which theories problematize and create questions are themselves molded by a given worldview. This worldview sees states as either members of the interconnected global economic community or on the fringe. It is a discourse that not only produces a view of reality as such but who is and is not a member. Good governance is overtly a discourse on modernity and the modern condition but it is one that quite clearly claims to base itself in the objective, material, and empirical. It would be facile to suggest that this process has been one way. The African Renaissance indicates the emergence of an adaptive, syncretic discourse in Africa that is simultaneously being adopted by the developed world. French President Sarkozy’s Summer of 2007 speech in Senegal exemplifies the trend, highlighting the new international legitimacy, and, at times, demonstrating that it is, as Mbembe (2007) notes, still a civilizational discourse hiding behind the veil of the ‘‘modernity.’’ Sarkozy’s speech embraces the notion of a renaissance while simultaneously conjoining it with a more modern, yet clearly uninformed, European interpretation of negritude where Europe remains the measure of modernity. Sarkozy’s speech focuses on several themes that he sees as defining Africa’s global marginalization: a failure to embrace the modern world through endless debates about a pure African tradition, a failure to embrace the global economy, the failure to embrace openness and democracy, in short, a failure of good governance. Sarkozy rightly condemns the colonial past but also buries it in the rhetoric of the modern African. It is difficult to deny the underlying assumption that to be modern is to be in some way European, Western. Addressing a largely university audience, he declares ‘‘youth of Africa, European civilization was wrong to believe itself to be superior to that of your ancestors, but now, the European civilization belongs to you …. The African is as logic[al] and as reasonable as the European.’’ Throughout the speech, Sarkozy links African culture with European

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culture, while reminding his audience that Africa, with its colonial legacy, is a mix of traditions. He notes the historical intellectual battles between what appeared to be different traditions, that of Africa and of Europe. ‘‘But I came to tell you that the part of Europe that is in you is the fruit of a great sin of pride of the West, but that this part of Europe in you is not unworthy’’ as it is the call to freedom and equality, reason and conscience (Sarkozy 2007). And like Mbeki before him he implores Africa’s youth not to see the globalizing world as a threat to Africa’s traditions but to embrace it for it is here that the African Renaissance begins. Unlike Mbeki, however, Sarkozy likened the rhetoric of tradition that one hears from the ‘‘old ruling classes’’ as a rhetoric bound to keep the continent locked in an infantile state. Mbeki openly and warmly embraced these traditions as the very essence of a modern African. Sarkozy’s was no ‘‘I am an African’’ speech to be sure. Indeed, in his, at times scathing, critique of Sarkozy’s speech, Mbembe accused the French president of formulating policy based on the Hegelian worldview of the nineteenth century. But he took particular aim at how a new discourse conceptualized the new Africa and what it means to be African. In the process we can see this as a subtle critique of Mbeki’s Renaissance as well. Mbembe criticized Sarkozy’s ‘‘African man [as] above all characterized either by what he hasn’t got, what isn’t or by what he has never managed to achieve (the dialectic of lack and incompletion), or by his opposition to ‘modern Man’ (read ‘White man’), an opposition which apparently results from his irrational attachment to the kingdom of childhood, the world of night, to simple pleasures and a golden age that never existed’’ (Mbembe 2007). In many ways, then, the Renaissance and the new international legitimacy remains wedded to a worldview with the developed world as the center and measure of good, objectively proper governance. The beauty—if we may use the term—of this new discourse is its clear embrace of real problems identified by Africans themselves. It would be foolhardy to dismiss the effects of corruption, human rights abuses, and the general lack of any semblance of popular participation in governance, however defined. It would also be a mistake, as Ferguson (2006:33–34) notes, to embrace a notion of ‘‘relative modernity’’ that rejects the possibility that Africans might desire the material rewards of what we call the modern condition. In its practical details, the Sarkozy speech notes the venality of Africa’s elite and the poor state of many of its governing institutions as real problems; it is in partnership with the West that this can change. While the speech is heavy on the shared culture and rhetoric of the renaissance, it is indicative of the way in which the developed world now sees its relations with Africa. It is one of partnership centered around the spread of democracy and free markets. That the speech was widely dismissed at the time is irrelevant. It nevertheless suggests that Mbeki’s Renaissance has resonated with the leaders of the West (or at least G7) and that Mbeki has found a discursive middle path to engage the developed world. To dismiss the underlying discourse shaping interstate relations as mere rhetoric is to dismiss the power of discourse to legitimate certain behaviors over others. Moreover, as a discourse evolves from an overt normative basis to one that can claim some semblance of objective truth it becomes far more difficult to dismiss (see Gill 1995; Mohan 1994). Discourse sets the criteria by which a state’s actions and justifications will be judged (see Wavell 1986; Kratochwil 1989). Alternate discourses may exist but can be dismissed as irrelevant. Dominant discourses set ⁄ define what is relevant and rational in both behavior and speech. That said, the economic power of the developed world makes their worldview relevant and dominant. If states seek not to engage the developed world or can play powerful states off each other, as was the case during the Cold War, then it is difficult to say which discourse(s) are dominant. The use of socialist tinged discourse during the Cold War suggests, however, that engaging the Soviet Union meant appealing to its

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worldview as well. That it chimed well with the developing world with its antiimperialist discourse in the immediate postcolonial context may explain its ready acceptance. But the post-cold war environment has left only one discourse: neoliberalism. States seeking to engage the developing world then must appeal to this discourse if they wish to be heard. As Rancie`re (1999) has noted, when the powerless confront the powerful they must appeal to the worldview of the powerful to be heard, to be seen, and to be counted. Even a counter discourse such as the African Renaissance appeals to the neoliberal worldview by recognizing the right form of governance and the right form of economic relations. In doing so, however, the discourse becomes ‘‘owned’’ by Africans. Instead it becomes a means of dissent from within the worldview of the powerful itself. Conclusion The moral vision laid out as a cornerstone of Mandela’s foreign policy set the groundwork Mbeki’s vision for the continent as democratic and modern. The African Renaissance may be a vague vision for the future of Africa but it has shaped intra-continental relations. It served as a rallying call to Africa that it can embrace its past, move into a future, and join the global economic community. To this end concrete policies and institutions have emerged from NEPAD to the AU that are, however inchoate at the moment, beginning to shape the continent and its relations with the West. What this paper has demonstrated, however, is that this new vision, this discourse emerges out of a confluence of a very African- indeed, South African- and Western worldview. Its South African roots lie in the desire to repair the legacy of apartheid and the real economic rewards of economic integration. The call to good governance imbedded within this discourse serves a practical as well as ideological function. If South Africa is to grow then so to must the continent as a whole. The legacy of poor governance stood out as a blight on even those states with long traditions of democracy and economic prudence. In a way, then, the Renaissance, NEPAD, and the new AU serve the self-interests of South Africa while also painting a vision for the future for all of Africa. Mbeki’s vision struck a middle ground that acted as a path to a new partnership with the developed world. South Africa’s embrace of the basic ideas of good governance resonated with the West and tapped into the new international legitimacy. It has allowed for a broad tool of dissent, as the Doha round of WTO negotiations suggests. But as this paper has demonstrated, this is not merely adoption. South Africa under Mbeki laid down its own path by adopting and adapting the very ideas of neoliberalism making them its own. References Abiola, Irele. (1981) The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. Exeter, NH: Heinemann. African National Congress (ANC). (1998) Developing a Strategic Perspective on South African Foreign Policy. ANC Discussion Document. Ahluwalia, Pal. (1999) ‘Negritude and Nativism’ in Search of Identity. Africa Quarterly 39: 21–43. Ahluwalia, Pal. (2002) The Struggle for African Identity: Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance. African and Asian Studies 1: 265–277. Bayart, Jean-Francois. (1993) The State in Africa: Politics of the Belly. New York: Longman. Comaroff, Jean., and John Comaroff (1986) Christianity and Colonialism in South Africa. American Ethnologist 13: 1–22. Crawford, Neta C. (2002) Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention. New York: Cambridge University Press. Crowder, Michael. (1964) Indirect Rule: French and British Style. Africa 34: 197–205. Department of Trade and Industry (2001) The Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Programme: A Market Access Action Plan for Africa. 31, May. Available at www.nepad.org/2005/ files/documents/24.pdf. (Accessed March 10, 2008.)

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