Search

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]

South African diplomacy went through four broad phases in the period from 1990 to early 1999, and their identification is the starting point for an examination of the role of the 'new' South Africa's foreign policy. Earliest signs of a new foreign policy were the negotiated settlement of the Namibian dispute in the late 1980s and the termination of South Africa's nuclear deterrence programme which opened up the prospect of closer collaboration in Africa and admission to global efforts to stem proliferation. The rapid pace of change meant that, by the time the Government of National Unity assumed power in 1994, some of the African National Council's foreign policy and diplomatic initiatives have been overtaken. After 1994 the priority shifted to Africa, the southern hemisphere and the Non-Aligned Movement, and to universal moral and humanitarian issues. The author reviews the consistency of policy in subsequent years, South African initiatives on Nigeria, Libya and Lesotho, and the adoption of a new set of priorities in the early part of 1999. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]