YACOOB ABBA OMAR: SA needs a political and intellectual heavyweight to replace Pandor as foreign minister

One of the issues the signatories to the government of national unity (GNU) will need to confront soon is how SA’s foreign relations will be managed. 

Former foreign minister Naledi Pandor has played an important role on the world stage, championing SA’s foreign policies with determination and grace. President Cyril Ramaphosa will be hard-pressed to find a replacement if he decides not to bring her back into the cabinet by using the presidential prerogative to make two ministerial appointments of non-MPs. 

Under the ANC-led government there tended to be a diplomatic triangle shaping SA’s foreign policy: the ANC’s international relations committee, the international relations & co-operation department and the presidency.

It was inevitable that the ANC brought into the newly formed democratic government its long, deep traditions of international solidarity, pan-Africanism and multilateralism.

Over the past century the party has built strong connections with the African diaspora as well as people on the continent. For example, the first president of the ANC, John Langalibalele Dube, was inspired to establish the Ohlange Institute at Inanda, Durban, after his visit to Tuskegee College in Alabama, US, which was founded by black activist Booker T Washington in the 1880s. Notwithstanding their differing perspectives, Pan Africanists WEB du Bois and Marcus Garvey found expression in many political formations in SA.

Within the ANC, this commitment to Africa was articulated from the earliest of times and has been a constant refrain:

• In 1906 Pixley ka Isaka Seme, one of the founders of the ANC, when awarded the Curtis Medal, University of Columbia’s highest oratorical honour, said: “I am an African, and I set my pride in my race over against a hostile public opinion.”
• In 1961 ANC president Albert Luthuli, in accepting the Nobel peace prize, said: “Somewhere there beckons a civilisation which will take its place in God’s history with other great human syntheses: Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish, European. It will not necessarily be all black: but it will be African.” 
• Thabo Mbeki echoed Seme’s assertion and defined his notion of an African renaissance in his “I am an African” speech to mark the adoption of the SA constitution in May 1996. 
• In his 2022 speech at a Mapungubwe Institute conference on developing a pan-African agenda dealing with global issues, executive director Joel Netshitenzhe called for Africa to “hew its path to prosperity in this jungle of fraught geopolitics, while at the same time addressing local constraints to progress”. 

During the campaign to isolate the apartheid system, ANC leaders and diplomats learnt to walk the tightrope between what was then seen as the social democratic, communist and socialist blocs, from which it received generous support, and Western capitals, which at crucial moments were controlled by right-wing, conservative governments. 

The ANC’s diplomatic prowess was deployed in the interests of democratic SA and the Global South as Nelson Mandela was feted all over the world, and then under Mbeki’s leadership. It was therefore no surprise that in 2023 the SA government took Israel to the International Court of Justice over its alleged genocidal intent in Gaza, as well as committing to a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine-Russia war.

Whoever is appointed foreign minister will have to build on these traditions, balancing the pressures from Luthuli House and the Union Buildings with the needs of the OR Tambo building, the department’s headquarters. Perhaps the best embodiment of this juggling act was Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma as foreign affairs minister, in her duet with Mbeki as president.

An intellectual and political heavyweight, she was able to bring the ANC’s long diplomatic history into the government’s foreign policy as she strode the world pushing the interests of the Global South, Africa and SA. 

Under the GNU we can look forward to a more active oversight role being played by parliament. Also, far more attention will need to be paid to retaining and building the department’s professional capacity as SA takes on the many global issues it addresses. 

• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute.