The beginning of the post-apartheid era in South Africa in 1994 coincided with the aftermath of the Cold War marked by a US and western hegemony after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which had wrestled the US for global dominance since the end of World War 2 in 1945.
Some scholars have pointed out that South Africa had to deal with a “double transition”: on the domestic front from apartheid to democracy and on the international front from bipolarity to unipolarity.
Born into a unipolar world, post-apartheid South Africa’s foreign policy parameters were firmly set, presenting limited room for manoeuvre. In 1995 the Group of Seven (G7 — the US, UK, France, Japan, Italy, Germany and Canada) produced an overwhelming 65.5% — the US alone produced 25% — of the global GDP.
With its economic might, the West’s control of global economic institutions — such as the IMF, the World Bank and the then General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which later became the World Trade Organisation — was secure.
Middle powers like South Africa had no choice but to seek refuge in the western orbit and behave according to rules authored by the West to advance their national interests. Despite having to navigate a world dominated by the West, South Africa’s foreign policy retained a distinct Global South dimension anchored on a moral rather than material basis.
The Nelson Mandela administration quickly established its foothold in movements defending the interests of the Global South such as the Group of 77, the Non-Aligned Movement and the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
South Africa even chaired the latter two organisations just a few years into the post-apartheid era and did its best to amplify the Global South protest against an inequitable and rigged international economic system and an undemocratic and exclusive governance architecture.
However, at the same time, South Africa proved itself more than willing to live by the tenets of the neoliberal dogma as it drastically reduced its trade tariffs on manufactured goods to 15.6% by 1997 from 21% in 1992.
Its efforts were duly acknowledged as it was granted the US Generalised System of Preferences in 1996 and secured a liberalised trade agreement with the EU in 1999 before being admitted to the US African Growth and Opportunity Act, through which selected African countries are granted duty-free access to the US market on a wide range of products.
While South Africa’s foreign policy rhetoric in the first two decades of the post-apartheid era was aligned with the Global South causes, its economic foreign policy embraced the neoliberal dogma of the West. This was a perfectly rational strategy as South Africa’s economic and security interests could be more effectively advanced by maintaining cordial relations with the hegemonic West.
Brics represents an opportunity to reshape the global economic architecture, which South Africa and other developing countries have long demanded
However, fast-forward two decades into the post-apartheid era, the Global South dimension of South African foreign policy, now with a more substantive material basis, was revitalised and gained prominence in Pretoria’s foreign policy considerations.
Perhaps the most prominent manifestation of this shift was South Africa’s entry into the Brics group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in 2010, a year after it was formed. The move was informed by the shifting of global economic power from the West to the East and the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar global order.
While the G7 produced more than 65% of global economic output in 1995, this was reduced to 43% in 2023. In comparison, the Brics countries, driven largely by China’s meteoric economic growth, produced 29% of global GDP in 2023, a significant increase from less than 6% in 1995.
Hence, with the West losing its monopoly of the global economy, countries like South Africa suddenly had more space to manoeuvre as they had alternative economic partners. Between 2017 and 2022 South Africa’s trade with Brics countries almost doubled from R487bn to R830bn.
China has become South Africa’s largest trading partner, with trade reaching more than $40bn. In comparison, trade between the US and South Africa was only $21bn in 2022.
China is also one of the biggest sources of foreign direct investment in South Africa with more than $5bn in investment stock in the country.
Brics represents an opportunity to reshape the global economic architecture, which South Africa and other developing countries have long demanded.
Through the creation of structures such as the Brics New Development Bank (NDP) and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement the bloc hopes to liberate developing countries from the decades-old stranglehold of the Bretton Woods institutions to which they have had to surrender their sovereignty in exchange for development loans. South Africa is already benefiting from the NDB loans.
The country has received $33bn in NDB loans for various development projects, which makes it the biggest recipient of such loans that come without the onerous conditions accompanied by the World Bank and the IMF loans.
Being part of Brics is consistent with the country’s development aspirations, which include addressing the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality, as articulated in the 2012 National Development Plan. South Africa’s close association with Brics has given the country policy autonomy on other global issues including the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Palestine conflict in which Pretoria has found itself at odds with Washington.
The country’s refusal to condemn and isolate Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and its staunch support of Palestine in its war with Israel certainly irked Washington.
A decade or two ago, the West’s economic dominance would not have made it possible for South Africa to adopt a position so patently at odds with that of the West on such consequential global issues. Being part of the Brics fold has not only allowed South Africa to advance its national economic and security interests, it has also allowed the country to act and speak more forcefully in line with its deeply held beliefs on global issues which have always been consistent with the Global South interests.
• David Monyae is the director of the Centre for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg
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