Next month Japan will be chairing the G7 summit. On the list of its invitees, Tokyo made a break with the recent past that has raised eyebrows; unlike previous hosts — Canada (2018), France (2019), the UK (2021) and Germany (2022), it did not include South Africa.
This is the first time President Cyril Ramaphosa will not be attending the elite summit. Inevitably, the question is being asked: is this a snub? A number of factors are at play in what Naledi Pandor, the minister of international relations and co-operation, has called an “unusual” decision.
An analysis of Japanese foreign policy since World War 2 presents a complex picture. The country was bombed into submission in 1945, and then chose to toe the US line on global affairs. Results were dramatic as Japan, with US support, rose from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to become the second-biggest economy in the world by 1968. It retained this status until China overtook it in 2010. This achievement was due to attracting US investment.
Japan reciprocated by espousing US foreign policy. This, during the Cold War, meant ideological antipathy to the communist/socialist bloc and alignment with some capitalist pariahs such as apartheid South Africa. In apartheid South Africa, Japan unwittingly isolated the developing world when its citizens were given the category of “honorary whites”.
Japan showed great foresight in 1993 when it established the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad), with the United Nations, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank and the AU Commission as co-hosts. Arguably, Japan pioneered the trend manifested in initiatives such as the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation and the African Growth & Opportunity Act.
Thus, Japan has shown an interest in Africa and the developing world, which casts its 2023 G7 invitations in contradictory terms. In its “Diplomatic Bluebook” report for 2023, Japan lists the developing world — the Global South — as a priority. The bluebook is the most important document of Japanese foreign policy. It is thus instructive that the Global South found a place on the shortlist of priorities.
Pandor, left out of the pre-summit G7 ministers meeting, seemed taken aback by Japan’s decision. Prima facie, Japan snubbed South Africa.
Following this logic, one could surmise that this is why Japan decided to invite only Comorian President Azali Assoumani, who is the chair of the African Union, to represent the continent, and to exclude South Africa.
Japan, as host, is well within its rights to do so and the decision fits the Ticad scope. It is also possible that Japan’s concerns about China, and a new, emerging world order that erodes US dominance, have persuaded it to offer overtures to Africa as a continent.
South Africa, understandably, is unimpressed. Pandor, left out of the pre-summit G7 ministers meeting, seemed taken aback by Japan’s decision. Prima facie, Japan snubbed South Africa.
The reasons? Ticad, for starters. South Africa did not attend Ticad 8 in Tunisia last year at presidential level after the country raised concerns about Morocco’s participation in the conference. South Africa has long sided with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara) in its territorial dispute with Morocco. Japan ignored South Africa’s questions over the matter, and South Africa made its feelings known by not going to Tunisia. Japan could be responding to that boycott.
Another explanation for the withheld invitation is the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Japan’s foreign policy mirrors that of the US, which means unequivocal condemnation of Russia. South Africa has refused to condemn Russia, citing that it did not want to be drawn into big power rivalry and conflict. This position is squarely in line with it's non-aligned foreign policy which has been taken by fellow BRICS' countries.
Japan’s stance on Russia is as complex as its other foreign policy stances. It was a signatory when the G7 condemned the commencement of hostilities in February 2022. The G7 called for sanctions on Russia. Japan went further in its “Diplomatic Bluebook” last year, urging Russia to withdraw from Ukraine and adhere to international law.
But Japan continued to import Russian oil. If anything, it imported more liquefied gas from Russia’s Sakhalin Island in 2022 than it did in 2021. When queried about this, Japan said Sakhalin was almost indispensable to its energy needs.
Simply put, Japan’s national interest trumped its condemnations of Russia. This backdrop provides grounds for accusing Japan of finding itself on the wrong side of history once again; embarrassing South Africa for its equivocation on Russia, while blithely ramping up its imports of Russian resources.
Tokyo, if we are to go by this logic, is all-too ready to let its national interests take precedence over its professed principles, but objects if other countries do the same.
Another confounding fact about this year’s bluebook is that Japan acknowledges that the developing world has not hewn unswervingly to the US/G7 stance on Russia. This, Japan says, deserves respect. Once again, this is Japan playing a two-sided game: on the one hand, snubbing one developing country — arguably to win favour with pro-sanctions players such as the US — while on the other hand reassuring the developing world that it respects its right to take its own line on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
* Monyae is the director for the Centre for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg
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