| Summary: | This thesis explores the post-apartheid South Africa's Africa policy through the lens of Kalevi
Holsti's 'national role conceptions' conceptual framework. One of the most significant
preoccupations of the post-apartheid South Africa's foreign policymakers in the Nelson
Mandela and Thabo Mbeki administrations (1994-2008) was defining the country's new
identity. This was indeed not a simple task by any measure. In assigning national roles to
their country, the Mandela and Mbeki administrations struggled to divorce South Africa and
themselves from an apartheid-inspired foreign policy deeply rooted in the Global North.
The new foreign policy that emerged was largely couched in morality, Africa, and the Global
South. There were two distinctive features of this foreign policy, however. While Mandela
emphasised the promotion of human rights in Africa as South Africa's major national role,
Mbeki preoccupied his administration in the task of renewing Africa. South Africa played a
leadership role through walking a tight rope in constructing partnerships with both African
countries and the developed countries, anchored in ending conflicts and supporting economic
development.
However, this thesis argues that Pretoria, seat of South Africa's government, realised that
national role conceptions as defined by Holsti do not operate in a global vacuum. Case
studies are examined to argue that, given its global ranking as a 'middle power', South
Africa's national roles were more successful in areas of its African interventions where its
national interest converged with those of powerful countries in the Global North. Pretoria's
interventions in Lesotho, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although often
faced with operational hiccups, were by and large fairly successful. This was precisely
because Pretoria's national roles, in the above-mentioned countries in which it intervened to
resolve conflicts, converged with bigger powers within the global arena.
In the case of South Africa's intervention in Zimbabwe, this thesis argues that it was difficult
to enforce its national roles as they came in direct conflict with those of the developed
countries in the West, led by Britain and the United States of America. Therefore, South
Africa failed to register foreign policy successes because of the stalemate between its own
national role conceptions and those of external powers.
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