One of the first things Nelson Mandela did as a free man was a victory lap around Africa, thanking the continent’s people and governments for their staunch support in South Africa’s liberation struggle. It took less than a year for a new diplomatic tone to emerge after the glad-handing. In 1995, Mandela demanded that General Sani Abacha’s regime in Nigeria release the activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni leaders who were held with him. After the junta hanged Saro-Wiwa, Mandela angrily called for the ousting of Abacha’s tyrannical regime.
There were also moments of farce and tragedy. Mandela’s efforts to bring together a bumptious Laurent-Désiré Kabila and an ailing Mobutu Sese Seko failed. With Mangosuthu Buthelezi as caretaker president while Mandela travelled overseas, South Africa’s army – with the backing of Mozambique’s President Joachim Chissano and Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe – invaded Lesotho to quell protests over a disputed election.
Our second democratically-elected president, Thabo Mbeki, then launched a makeover of the Organisation of African Unity. His vision for an African Union (AU) set him against Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade and Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi. Not intimidated by the boubous and agbadas of his rivals, the sober-suited Mbeki presided over the launching of the AU in Durban in 2002. South African security even subjected Qadhafi’s entourage to a weapons search. Mbeki pushed forward with pan-African institutions and organisations such as the New Partnership for African Development and African Peer Review Mechanism, which would help raise development capital and promote accountability.
Mbeki tried to mediate in Côte d’Ivoire, against a backdrop of insults from President Jacques Chirac, resentful of this intruder on France’s chasse gardée. In Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mbeki helped broker peace deals and elections, but it was his strategy in Zimbabwe that attracted the most attention and Western opprobrium.
Current President Jacob Zuma’s style is different from that of the cerebral Mbeki. Zuma quickly cemented relations with Qadhafi and President José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola. Congo-Brazzaville’s Denis Sassou-Nguesso visited recently, offering his embrace. These days, policy appears to be motivated primarily by business interests.
Mandela’s moral sense was clear, although there were jobs to create and business leaders to appease. Mbeki’s strategy gave Africa a new role in the international system. Those qualities suggested South Africa has been led with vision and imagination. Let us see what talents President Zuma brings to the continental stage. It is early days yet.
This article was first published in The Africa Report’s June-July 2010 edition.
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