Displaced Multilateralism? South Africa’s Participation at the United Nations: Disjunctures, Continuities and Contrasts

Studies in Diplomacy and International Relations

Volumn , Issue , 2006, Pages 26-50

  Cornelissen, Scarlett ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Foreign Policy; General Assembly; International Criminal Court; Security Council; United Nations

Indexed keywords

EID: 78149368335     PISSN: 27313921     EISSN: 2731393X     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1057/9780230503830_2     Document Type: Chapter

References (43)

1. See for example Bischoff, P.-H., ‘External and Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy Ambiguity: South African Foreign Policy and the Projection of Pluralist Middle Power,’ Politikon, 30:2 (2003) pp. 183–202; Nel, P., Taylor I. and van der Westhuizen, J. (eds), South Africa’s Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Change: The Limits of Reformism. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001); and Taylor, I., ‘Legitimisation and De-legitimisation within a Multilateral Organisation: South Africa and the Commonwealth’, Politikon, 27:1 (2000) pp. 51–72.
2. See for instance Nathan, L., ‘Consistency and Inconsistencies in South African Foreign Policy,’ International Affairs, 81:2 (2005) pp. 361–72.
3. Mandela, N., ‘South Africa’s Future Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, 72:5 (1993) p. 89.
4. Ibid.
5. Landsberg, C., ‘Promoting Democracy: The Mandela-Mbeki Doctrine,’ Journal of Democracy, 11:3 (2000) pp. 107–22.
6. South Africa served as a member of the World Meteorological Association (1998–2000), the executive board of the UN Children’s Fund (1998–2000), and the councils of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (1997–1999), the International Telecommunications Union (1994–1998) and of the UN Commission for Social Development (1997–2000).
7. Personal communication, Department of Foreign Affairs official, 28 April 2004. GA matters are dealt with by six committees. Agenda items relating to disarmament and international security are allocated to the First Committee. The Second Committee is responsible for economic and financial matters, while the third deals with social, humanitarian and cultural matters. Decolonisation and other related aspects, and administrative and budgetary matters fall under the remit of, respectively, the Fourth and Fifth Committees. Agenda items relating to legal matters are allocated to the Sixth Committee.
8. See ITaylor, I., Stuck in Middle GEAR: South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Foreign Relations (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2001).
9. UNCTAD (1996). The Midrand Declaration. Text submitted by the President of the Ninth Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Midrand, 10 May 1996.
10. See for instance Carim, X., ‘South Africa and UNCTAD IX: New beginnings?’ (Cape Town, South Africa, Institute for Security Studies, Occasional Paper No. 7, 1996).
11. See Taylor, I., ‘South Africa, the G-20, the G-20 and the IBSA Dialogue Forum: Implications for Future Global Governance’, Paper presented at the UN University, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 19–21 May 2004.
12. See for instance Cornelissen, S., ‘ “It’s Africa’s Turn!” The Narratives and Legitimations Surrounding Morocco and South Africa’s Bids for the 2006 and 2010 Fifa Finals,’ Third World Quarterly, 25:6 (2004) pp. 1293–309.
13. This strategy has borne mixed results. South Africa’s hosting of the Aids conference in 2000 was a tumultuous affair and counter-productive as it underscored the divisions between the ANC government on the one hand and domestic and international pressure groups on the other on how to most effectively deal with the country’s AIDS pandemic. Instead of neutralising many of the negative sentiment that controversial viewpoints by key state leaders such as the Minister of Health and Thabo Mbeki elicited (one of the key aims of the conference), the government appeared increasingly isolated.
14. Nel et al. argue that a significant element of South Africa’s current multilateral relations is based on the rhetoric of transforming the international system. They contend however that in practice, South Africa’s multilateralism can at best enable limited reformism. See Nel et al., South Africa’s Multilateral Diplomacy.
15. Swatuk, L., ‘From Rio to Johannesburg and beyond,’ Round Table, 92:371 (2003) pp. 465–76.
16. Steiner, M., ‘NGO reflections on the World Summit – Rio 10 or Rio 10?’, Review of European Community and International Environmental Law, 12:1 (2003) pp. 33–9.
17. Harris, S., ‘Tampering with the World Conference Against Racism,’ Social Alternatives, 21:3 (2000) pp. 20–7.
18. See for example Cooper, A., Higgott, R. and Nossal, K., Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1993) and Hamill, J. and Lee, D., ‘A Middle Power Paradox? South African Diplomacy in the Post-Apartheid Era,’ International Relations, 15:4 (2001) pp. 33–59.
19. Extensive analyses are provided by Ball, M., ‘Bloc Voting in the General Assembly,’ International Organization, 5 (1951) pp. 3–31 and Holloway, S. and Tomlinson, R., ‘The New World Order and the General Assembly: Bloc Realignment at the UN in the Post-Cold War World,’ Canadian Journal of Political Science, 28:2 (1995) pp. 227–54.
20. Mbeki, T., Address at the 56th session of the UN GA, 10 November 2001.
21. Mbeki, T., Address at the 58th session of the UN GA, 23 September 2003.
22. The Millennium Development Goals that were adopted during the 55th session of the GA in 2000, are: to halve poverty by 2015; to achieve universal primary education; to further gender equality and the empowerment of women; to reduce child mortality; to increase maternal health; to fight HIV/AIDS and malaria; to work towards environmental sustainability; and to develop a global partnership for development. Together the goals are meant to provide common direction for international development.
23. Mbeki, T., Address at the 59th session of the UN GA, 15 September 2005.
24. The Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, scornfully referred to the report as ‘flawed’ and the product of ‘a UN that doesn’t have a refined methodology’, This Day, 11 May 2004. Ironically, South Africa had fared even worse in the 2005 UNDP report, having fallen 35 places on the body’s Human Development Index.
25. ‘Restructuring Security Council “Central to Revitalising Body” ’, Business Day, 23 September 1997.
26. Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa ambassador to the UN, statement to General Assembly on Agenda Item 55: Revitalisation of the work of the General Assembly, 27 October 2003.
27. As noted by David Black, for instance, its major weapons procurement transaction, the Strategic Defence Procurement Package, implemented since the late 1990s, strongly belies the country’s foreign policy proclamations. See Black, D., ‘Democracy, Development, Security and South Africa’s “Arms Deal” ’, in Philip Nel and Janis Van der Westhuizen (eds), Democratizing Foreign Policy: Lessons from South Africa (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2003) pp. 137–55.
28. Dumisani Kumalo, Statement to the Security Council on extending the draft resolution exempting States not party to the Rome Statute, 12 June 2003.
29. ‘South Africa must Remain Uncowed before Goliath,’ Sunday Times, 6 July 2003.
30. See Hamill and Lee, ‘A Middle Power Paradox?’.
31. See Andrew Grant, J. and Taylor, I., ‘Global Governance and Conflict Diamonds: The Kimberley Process and the Quest for Clean Gems’, Round Table, 93:375 (2004) pp. 385–401.
32. Van der Westhuizen, J., ‘Working with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly: South Africa’s Role in the Global Campaign to Ban Landmines,’ in Nel et al, South Africa’s Multilateral Diplomacy, pp. 31–44.
33. Wixley, S., A Case Study of Advocacy Initiatives: The South African Campaign to Ban Land Mines, 1997 (mimeo).
34. For example, in 1995 at a UN International Meeting on Mine Clearance, South Africa undertook to assist the UN Stand-by Capacity for training programmes for mine clearance. It also signed a Declaration of Intent with the Mozambican government in 1995 to cooperate in demining in the neighbouring country.
35. Department of Foreign Affairs, ‘Convention on the prohibition or restrictions on the use of certain conventional weapons’, www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/ Multilateral/inter/treaties/ccw.htm, Accessed 30 January 2005.
36. A/RES/50/70O, ‘Moratorium on the export of anti-personnel landmines,’ 12 December 1995.
37. A/RES/52/38, ‘Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction,’ 9 December 1997.
38. For instance, A/RES/57/74 and A/RES/58/53, respectively on the ‘Implementation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction,’ 22 November 2002 and the ‘Implementation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction,’ 8 December 2003.
39. In 2002 the United States General Accounting Office released a report criticising aspects of the Kimberley Process such as the shortage of formal risk analysis procedures and that many of its controls are not compulsory, but recommended.
40. See for instance Burkhalter, H., ‘A Diamond Agreement in the Rough,’ Foreign Policy, 73:2 (2003) pp 72–3 and Grant and Taylor, ‘Global governance and conflict diamonds’.
41. The threat of a consumer boycott played a major role in the South African mining giant, De Beers, partaking in the Kimberley Process. In its 2000 annual report, the company for instance stated, ‘the possible effect of conflict diamonds on consumer confidence is a threat to the entire legitimate diamond industry’. Cited in Burkhalter, ‘A Diamond Agreement’. See also Taylor, I. and Mokhawa, G., ‘Not Forever: Botswana, Conflict Diamonds and the Bushmen’, African Affairs, 102:407 (2003) pp. 261–83.
42. Mandela, N., media statement, 17 November 1999.
43. In the case of the Ottawa Process, lobbying in South Africa was driven by the South African Campaign to Ban Landmines, a loose amalgamation of NGOs, religious-and community-based organisations, anti-apartheid activists and at times veteran associations tied to the Azanian People’s Liberation Army and Umkhonto we Sizwe. In 1996 veteran associations often made appeals to the South African government to support the then nascent international move to ban landmines. The campaign against conflict diamonds was initiated by two Northern NGOs, Global Witness, a British-based organisation and Partnership Africa-Canada. Together, these two organisations set off a consumer awareness campaign around conflict diamonds that soon drew in and was supported by smaller South African NGOs and activists.