Abstract
This chapter applies role theory to explore South Africa’s continued standing as a regional leader, differentiating between the Southern African Development Community (SADC) subregion and the broader African continent. The country’s success in exercising different leadership strategies (multilateral, distributional, consensual, ideational, and representational) is assessed, and the major challenges—domestic constraints and a lack of legitimacy—to its continued leadership are discussed. It is contended that while South Africa seems to be more committed to and assertive in exercising leadership in the SADC subregion, its influence at the continental level is waning. At the same time, South Africa has not yet been supplanted as the regional leader in either sphere, although other African states reluctantly acquiesce to its status.
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Notes
- 1.
There was, however, some questioning as to the accuracy of these new figures, which were largely based on a rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP. The unreliability of such comparisons is also due to fluctuations in foreign exchange rates. In 2016, South Africa again officially overtook Nigeria as the largest African economy, due to an increase in the exchange rate value of the rand, which subsequently increased the US dollar value of the South African GDP.
- 2.
For a comprehensive overview of South Africa’s development assistance activities—both past and present—see Besharati (2013).
- 3.
One of the first things the ANC did when it assumed power was to forgive the debts of Swaziland, Mozambique, and Namibia, each valued in the neighbourhood of ZAR 1 billion (Besharati 2013, 1).
- 4.
Created in 1910, SACU members are South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, and Swaziland.
- 5.
For an exploration of how South Africa’s own negotiated transition has influenced its regional conflict resolution strategies, see Williams (2015).
- 6.
For more on this, see Miti (n.d.).
- 7.
The assumption is often that regional powers take on a position of leadership to advance their own interests. However, questions have been raised about the extent to which South Africa has been able to translate its investments in Africa—through the provision of public goods, for example, into tangible benefits. Increasingly, there is criticism that while South Africa has partly footed the bill for, as a case in point, the peace process in the DRC, other states—particularly emerging powers like China—are deriving the greatest benefit from the establishment of peace and stability.
- 8.
For a discussion of South Africa’s policy of quiet diplomacy towards Zimbabwe, see Lipton (2009).
- 9.
For a differentiation between different types of ideational leadership—intellectual, entrepreneurial, and implementation—see Geldenhuys (2010).
- 10.
At the heart of the allegations of state capture is the fraternal relationship between President Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family, three naturalised brothers of Indian origin who have built an expansive business empire on the backs of government contracts since their arrival in South Africa in 1993.
- 11.
This is an alliance between the ANC , the South African Communist Party (SACP) , and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) .
- 12.
See Smith and van der Westhuizen (2015).
- 13.
Interestingly, Clark (2016, 33) highlights the geographical limitations to South Africa’s continental leadership, arguing that “[i]ts capability for regional or subregional hegemony would have been increased considerably if the country had been physically situated elsewhere on the continent.” This, he argues, is because “South Africa’s peripheral location in relation to the geographic center of continental Africa certainly limits its ability to respond in a military fashion to crises around the continent” (Clark 2016, 42).
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Smith, K. (2018). South Africa: Still an Ambivalent (Sub)Regional Leader?. In: Ebert, H., Flemes, D. (eds) Regional Powers and Contested Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73691-4_4
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