Let's not upset the generals

Jan 25th 2007
A controversial vote shows how far the country's foreign policy has changed

LESS than a month after taking up its seat (for two years) at the UN Security Council, South Africa created a stir with its very first vote. It was the only country to side with China and Russia in opposing a resolution calling on Myanmar's military rulers to improve their appalling human-rights record. China's and Russia's knuckles are regularly rapped over their own records in this respect, and the Chinese have vested interests in the Burmese junta. So their veto was no surprise. But South Africa's vote seemed odd for a country whose first democratic president, Nelson Mandela, said it would regard human rights as “the light that guides our foreign policy”. Archbishop Desmond Tutu declared that the vote was a betrayal of South Africa's past.

The official explanation is that, although the situation in Myanmar is bad, it does not pose a security risk, so it is beyond the Security Council's mandate. The problem, South Africa argues, would be best tackled in other UN bodies, such as the Human Rights Council. But South Africa's vote may have had less to do with UN procedure and more to do with sending some strong signals about its foreign priorities.

The vote presented a chance for South Africa to “nail its colours to the mast”, says Garth Le Pere of the Institute for Global Dialogue, a local research outfit. That means waving a flag for poor countries to redress the perceived hegemony of the West. China has become a big trading partner for Africa, and Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, made his first visit to South Africa last year. South Africa is building closer links with Brazil and India, and has defended Iran over its nuclear ambitions. It also wants the poor world to have a louder voice in the Security Council, the World Bank and the IMF.

This is quite a change from the Mandela presidency, when a freshly democratic South Africa, basking in its moral glory, promoted the upholding of human rights as its guiding foreign-policy principle. Now President Thabo Mbeki's priority is to put African interests and those of the poor world, as he sees them, first. South Africa has been preoccupied with building a stronger continent, including new structures such as the African Union (AU), in the hope of reducing Africa's reliance on Western help and its vulnerability—in Mr Mbeki's view—to Western meddling. South Africa has sent peacekeepers or mediators to trouble spots across Africa, from Sudan to Côte d'Ivoire, and may now send troops to Somalia. These efforts have produced patchy results, but South Africa, once an international pariah, has become a favourite mediator for addressing Africa's myriad conflicts.

But the Myanmar vote is an awkward way to advance such worthy aims. Mr Tutu argued that South Africa would not be the free country it is today if others had taken similar views at the UN in the apartheid years. Its moral reputation has already been tarnished by its failure to denounce Robert Mugabe's dreadful regime in neighbouring Zimbabwe. South Africa will have a chance next week to redeem itself, at least partly, when the AU decides whether to let Sudan, whose government has overseen mass-murder in the Darfur region, take the organisation's annual chair. South Africa is expected to oppose the move, as it did last year. But from being a rare African beacon for human rights, it has become more like most other countries around the world—putting their own interests before principle.
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