The election of South Africa by an overwhelming majority of the countries of the world to serve in the UN Security Council for the third time in a decade, after stints in 2008 and 2011, is a rare occurrence, but a positive signal about the country’s stature in the world. It was elected with a huge majority of 92% of the countries in the UN General Assembly, suggesting that the country is trusted to represent its interests and those of others who supported its candidature.
This is a matter for deliberation in and of itself, especially the extent to which the country will, working with others, advance the greater interests of this 92% of the UN membership, representing a huge population with the poor in the majority. We will deal with this in another piece.
Our focus in this piece relates to the national agenda to be pursued. South Africa has on many occasions known how to get itself on strategic platforms of global affairs, but whether it has been able to harness these opportunities to demonstrate real influence is a matter for debate. It got itself elected to the Security Council twice before, in 2007-8 and in 2011-12, but the influence it made on the role of this body in advancing a peaceful, weapons-free world is still being debated by academics and activists alike.
The government is convinced that it did very well in these two stints because it raised certain issues and used its vote to convey certain messages. But that is government talking about its interests and its plans during the period. Whether the country (the state) must regard these two stints as of significance in advancing what the country stands for is another matter. It is about the extent to which the people of South Africa think their interests are served by the way in which the South African government played its role at the UN generally and in the Security Council in particular.
The safest way, in my view, for a government to exercise this responsibility to advance a country’s role in global affairs is by extracting out of its constitution, its laws, policies and its plans that which might be taken together to imply a country’s interests to be pursued in global institutions when opportunities arise.
The foreign policy thus becomes an expression on global platforms of the national agenda.
Therefore, we cannot fully assess how the South African government has used the country’s opportunities globally without interpreting the extent to which the express foreign policy in writing and action are in fact a reasonable representation of the national agenda, not just the agenda of national government. The principles in the constitution are such that they not only balance economic, political, social and cultural aspirations of the country but whether these find expression in the foreign policy that the government pursues is a matter in need of elaborate discussion.
But, in respect of the specific policy positions already declared as the focus of the South African government at the UN Security Council, some principles are more prominent than others. In this case, the principles of peaceful resolution of conflict, dialogue, and co-operation stand out from the stated government motive for standing for election to the Council. The point is that society has to be vigilant to ensure that government does not pursue its own elite interest in being seen on big platforms among big powers, the penchant for being in the company of the powerful or the need to project itself as a good government that occupied places of prestige in global affairs. These do not of themselves meet the country’s vital interests, unless there is an express intent to ensure whatever is done and attained seeks to fulfil the country’s interests as outlined in the constitution, national development plan and national policies.
I am aware of questions to be raised about the extent to which these three sets of sources for determining the national interests mentioned actually express such interests given the elitist nature of their development and adoption. For the purpose of this think piece, we will in principle suggest they are to some extent the formal attempt to indicate national interests, albeit with questionable parameters.
Part of the challenge in explaining the value derived from a seat in the Council is that we are yet to see a comprehensive review of the country’s previous two terms, in respect of the extent to which these were used to advance the national agenda, the needs of South Africa as a country, not just its government. We are yet to dissect in priorities, actions and conduct, what constitutes what might be understood to be the interests of the people of South Africa as a whole.
This is principally the fault of foreign policy observers and analysts, students of international relations in South Africa. If it is accepted even with reservations that the people of this country in their majority have hoped to free themselves from the shackles of oppression manifest in structural and social and economic inequality, poverty, a sense of alienation, unemployment, lack of wealth-making opportunities, social deprivation, racism and sexism and so forth, then it must follow that South Africa’s membership of the UNSC or any other platform of prestige is used consciously and obviously to help the country meet these national interests.
This enjoins government which is mandated by elections and construction to represent the country’s interests to indicate how the announced priorities for the term constitute the country’s interests. It has to show that it is interested in more than just reputation and prestige. It has to show how these priorities set out to address the needs of the peoples of South Africa and Africa that it is part of. Announced were the following priorities: to promote the maintenance of international peace and security by advocating peaceful settlement of conflict and inclusive dialogue. The second is to promote close co-operation between the UNSC as the premier platform for international peace and security and other regional organisations including the African Union. The third is to ensure an inclusive pursuit of peace including the involvement of women in line with the Security Council Resolution 1325 adopted in 2000.
Unless all of this is done in order to make possible the well-being of the peoples of the world and of South Africa and Africa, then it is less significant than it is assumed. The minister of the International Relations and Co-operation’s statement on South Africa’s election to the non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council (on June 8) closes by stating that, “only when we have peace and a culture of peace, can we have sustainable development”.
This enables the government to claim every peace effort as laying the ground for development, a paradigm about sequence between peace and development that must be taken with some caution.
How this is achieved is also dependent on how government pursues the three priorities. It is that it keeps in mind always that it is all about the well-being of the people. It is to act in a way in keeping with the internalised ubuntu paradigm of life as an underlying orientation that underpins what we do and say, and how we do what we do.
Ubuntu advances principles of placing human well-being at the centre, where it is not self-interest, the interests of human beings who suffer from our failure to achieve certain things.
It is where ubuntu means we end the sense of beings and sub-beings, reject racism, bigotry, supremacist tendencies, and other things by which we normalise dehumanisation of some among us.
We have to watch how decisions are made, what is said and done, and how it is done in order to determine if it is all done for the well-being of our people, whether ubuntu lies at the heart of what is done or it is the pursuit of prestige for government.
* Dr Zondi is a professor of political science at the University of Pretoria