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Drawing evidence from existing archives, parliamentary proceedings, presidential speeches, newspaper reports and oral testimonies, this paper demonstrates the extent to which Malawi sustained diplomatic relations with Taiwan and China from 1961 to 2014, within the broader context of southern Africa. While trade dictated the diplomatic choice of the so-called 'two Chinas', individual leadership styles as well as domestic politics remained the decisive factors. However, the paper argues that the process was dynamic, complex and highly contested – and that the broader idiographic context of southern Africa mattered. For while local circumstances created the need for diplomatic relations, it was the international political economy that acted as the impetus behind the establishment and shifting sustenance of the relationships. In making this argument, the study draws attention to how global forces interacted historically with local political economies within southern Africa to shape discourses of diplomacy as well as how economic challenges forced states to make compromises – including undermining human rights – in the making of these diplomatic relations over the last two generations in post-independence Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ubuntu is an African philosophical worldview that has increasingly gained prominence since South Africa's democratic transition in 1994. It places emphasis on the world's common humanity and its consequent interdependence. Through content analysis, the article examines the soft power that is inherent in South Africa's foreign policy, as codified in the 2011 White Paper on South African Foreign Policy–Building a Better World: Diplomacy of Ubuntu. In its findings, the article established a distinction between Joseph Nye's original conceptualization of soft power, formulated from a United States realist foreign policy perspective, and the one inherent in South Africa's humanist foreign policy guided by the philosophy of Ubuntu. This distinction is premised on the geopolitical disparities between the two nations. The article further examines South Africa's wielding of soft power within the African continent, the first audience of the country's diplomacy of Ubuntu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With South Africa having declared itself a developmental state, this paper posits that if a developmental state is one that drives development, then the foreign policy of such a state should pursue development as one of its most important goals. Similarly the diplomatic corps of such a state should prioritise economic, commercial, para- and public diplomacy as drivers of diplomacy. In answering the question, ‘What should be the foreign policy and diplomatic attributes of a developmental state?’, the authors, through an exploratory approach, seek to analyse how well the state has fared in achieving this objective. To be a successful developmental state, a strategic capacity should exist and a clear strategic conception of the state's national interest should be formulated. Old paradigms about the role and functions of the diplomatic corps are challenged and a meritocratic diplomatic corps is strongly advocated to support the state's declared developmental goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As questions concerning international development climb the international agenda, so countries find themselves drawn into a burgeoning number of negotiations on issues ranging from the future shape and direction of the post-2015 development agenda to ‘aid effectiveness’ and international development cooperation. Moving from the position of a ‘beneficiary’ state in the traditional donor–recipient aid hierarchy, South Africa is looking to define its own niche within the wider development diplomacy context as a development partner. This paper provides an assessment of South Africa's evolving approach towards international development cooperation, with a particular focus on trilateral development cooperation, and what this means for Pretoria's foreign policy in bridging the divide between developed and developing country positions within the international development regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the extent to which South Africa's policy towards Zimbabwe under the Mbeki administration was shaped by economic and commercial considerations. Given the extensive involvement and growing influence of the South African business sector in Zimbabwe, the potential link between the South African government's policy stance towards Zimbabwe and South Africa's commercial interests in Zimbabwe is intuitively appealing. This paper argues, however, that although South African firms have exploited the commercial opportunities that have emerged from the political and economic crises in Zimbabwe, it is not clear from the available evidence if commercial interests have been a primary consideration in South Africa's policy towards Zimbabwe. It concludes that the Mbeki government's policy of 'quiet diplomacy' towards Zimbabwe was not principally shaped by economic objectives, but was instead driven predominantly by political and ideological concerns, which related closely to perceptions about South Africa's role on the African continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuing crisis over Zimbabwe raises a variety of issues of considerable interest to both the theorist and the practitioner of foreign policy: the merits or otherwise of contemporary attempts at state classification; the utility and morality of intervention in a state's internal affairs by economic or military means; the notion of hegemony; the assumptions underpinning African diplomacy; the incentives and constraints attendant on South Africa's foreign policy. In attempting to explain South Africa's role in the Zimbabwean crisis this paper will—where appropriate—make reference to these theoretical concerns on the assumption that the interaction between South Africa and Zimbabwe provides some revealing insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]