Nepad: South Africa, African Economies and Globalisation

With its successful democratic transition, South Africa emerged during the second half of the 1990s as a new political and economic factor on the continent. Within this process, Thabo Mbeki's foreign policy approach could be characterised as 'a complicated and sometimes contradictory mixture of ideology, idealism and pragmatism' (Gerrit Olivier in International Affairs, no. 4/2003). South Africa's Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, in a keynote address to the German Foundation for International Development, characterised as early as December 1998 the emerging South African strategy in a revealing way by asserting 'there is a new resilience and a new will to succeed in the African continent. We in South Africa have called it a renaissance, a new vision of political and economic renewal. It takes the global competitive marketplace as point of departure.'

Such understanding gave birth to The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NePAD), for which Thabo Mbeki and his team can be considered to be the midwives (if not fathers – due to the absence of women in the male dominated process). NePAD has managed to obtain - after some diplomatic manoeuvring and a number of strategic compromises - the blessings of the African Union and subsequently the United Nations General Assembly. It can be considered as a blue print for Africa's further socio-economic integration into the dominant global market.

Critical assessments of this strategy, which had been successfully promoted as the development paradigm by a number of African governments with the backing of the G8, have pointed out that its concept blends nicely into the neo-liberal mainstream of globalisation. It is fully in line with the economic strategy of South Africa's present government, seeking closer integration into the dominant structures of the world economy. As Ian Taylor and Philip Nel have warned (in Third World Quarterly, no. 1/2002), the inherent danger of such a strategic move might lie in the message that it serves to legitimise instead of aiming to restructure the existing global power relations, to which African countries have been a victim. They further articulate the suspicion that the driving force behind such a policy might be the 'linkage between globalisation, export-driven trade policies and a nascent transnational elite', and maintain that 'making neoliberalism somehow "work for all", rather than rethinking the overall global trading system, is the key strategy of South Africa particularly and New Africa more generally'.

As if to confirm, South Africa's Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, in his capacity as the Chairman of the Development Committee to the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey on 18 March 2002 stated: 'There is general consensus that globalisation provides an opportunity for countries to improve standards of living, but its not an end in itself … The key challenge is to attempt to manage globalisation in such a way that it does lead to poverty reduction' (http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/ffd253b.htm). But clearly so, NePAD will not be able to replace demands for a fair share in the world's resources by those who have been the victims of domination and exploitation for far too long. At best it might be able to slightly increase the far too tiny piece shared from the global cake with stakeholders in Africa (stakeholders should in this context of course read as shareholders). Instead of a meaningful radical alternative, NePAD seems to be much closer to "more of the same" - namely capitalism as a new form of global apartheid, as Patrick Bond keeps on warning in his recent writings. Along similar lines, Ian Taylor reminds of the active role elites in the South have played in this recent process of capitalist expansion termed (misleadingly) "globalisation" by supporting the new Washington Consensus, resulting in the promotion of the liberalisation of trade and capital movements. It remains to be seen if there is from the point of view of those outside of these elites any substance in the pragmatism, which argues: better this capitalism than no capitalism at all.

Such affirmative response to re-structuring the access to potential resources among others through a "trade as aid" paradigm has been articulated by the South African Foreign Minister Dlamini Zuma in an address on 22 March 2002 to the University of Alberta, in which she had the following to offer: 'To the private sector, the continent of Africa is endowed with the human capital, mineral wealth and unlimited opportunities for trade, investment and partnership as proposed in the NePAD programme. Other countries are taking advantage of this burgeoning market; it is imperative that you are not left behind. The opportunities abound in Africa.' (http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/unal253a.htm) She did not need to send such a message to the capital at home: the windows of opportunity had already been discovered by the big companies operating from a South African base.

There is massive expansion of South African capital into the continent of hitherto unprecedented dimensions. This is illustrated in a chapter written by John Daniel/Varusha Naidoo and Sanusha Naidu to the "State of the Nation" volume for 2003-2004, published by the Human Sciences Research Council. Its title says it all: "The South Africans have arrived". And an article in the Financial Times (17 November 2003) identifies 'a strategic shift by South African businesses' through companies 'striking out in search of bigger profit margins in their backyard'. Already since 1991 South Africa has been the largest foreign direct investor (with an annual average of $ 1.4 billion) within the continent. Large scale operations are undertaken by a variety of private companies as well as (ex-)parastatals, ranging from Spoornet and Portnet via Eskom and Sasol to South African Airways. MTN and Vodacom compete as operators in the telecommunication business also abroad and invest in the potentially huge markets of Nigeria and the DRC. Financial institutions such as Standard Bank join the "traditional" multinationals in the mining sector, which have a longstanding experience in seeking other profitable opportunities to accumulate further.

Presumably greener pastures are explored and invaded by the local giants in the wholesale and retail business. South African chain stores mushroom all over the continent, South African Breweries owns and controls large parts of the beverage sector elsewhere. This penetration of neighbouring and continental markets goes hand in hand with the particular pro-active role of South Africa in engaging in and addressing international trade issues through a strategic involvement of the ministers for trade and for finance respectively in the current efforts to modify the global economy under the WTO. It is complemented by a parallel intensification of South-South cooperation seeking the consolidation of an alliance between the economically more powerful transitional economies such as South Africa, Brazil, India and China.

The South African economist Stephen Gelb, previously member of Thabo Mbeki's team drafting the original policy documents preceding NePAD, reminded in a recent analysis published with his Edge Institute of the South African president's earlier approach. In a 1997 speech the then-Deputy President referred to the need for South Africa 'to "walk on two legs" in its foreign policy – to cultivate strong relations with the South, as well as strategic relations with the industrialised countries'. Gelb concludes, that NePAD 'is grounded in the full realities of South Africa's relations with the continent, including those beyond its immediate regional neighbourhood in Southern Africa. At the same time it is also grounded in the realities of globalisation, especially the unevenness of its impact amongst and within nations, and reflects an attempt to shift the continent, including South Africa itself, towards a more effective engagement.' More radical critics, who had opted to remain outside of the centres of political and economic power in present South Africa, speak out more directly. This is among others reflected in a number of articles published in the South African Labour Bulletin (no. 3/2003) under the thematic title "NEPAD – a wish to build a dream on". They suggest from a more or less critical distance that NePAD offers the opportunity for South African capital to expand further in Africa by creating new market access. NePAD is hence considered as a lubricant for a South African expansion into other parts of the continent, which under an Apartheid regime until the early 1990s would have not been conceivable. Almost ironically, only a politically correct post-Apartheid government allows the promotion of and greases a process, which is again (though not exclusively) to the benefit of those who already profited from the previous undemocratic system at home and can now enter spaces abroad.

Confronted with this view on occasion of a public NePAD seminar in Stockholm (held on 9 October 2003 on occasion of the 3rd meeting of the Swedish-South African Binational Commission) the South African Vice President Jacob Zuma and the Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad seemed not amused. Their responses suggested that they perceive the South African type of capitalism as better suited for African conditions than other forms of capitalism (or no capitalism at all), and by no means a problem. The suggestion that the (class) struggle continues also in democratic South Africa was brushed aside as another example of the notorious "ultra-leftism". But maybe they should join in with Robert Zimmermann (aká Bob Dylan) to intonate the meanwhile classical refrain "and the times, they are a-changing" – or, for that matter, admit that they (the times) haven't changed as much as one might have thought a couple of years ago that they would.

* This editorial is a revised short version of a presentation to the Stockholm seminar mentioned in the last paragraph. It was based on a considerably longer manuscript on NePAD for a volume on Africa and International Politics, edited by Ulf Engel and Gorm Rye Olsen, to be published during 2004 with Routledge. The author is Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and has been Director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek from 1992 until 2000.

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