South Africa’s foreign policy has to a great degree been shaped by the history of the governing party in the struggle against apartheid. That history relates to the African National Congress having adopted at a very early stage, through one of our great leaders Oliver Tambo, the pursuit of an international collaboration against apartheid – an international dimension to the struggle for freedom.
This partnership globally against apartheid developed a particular attitude on international matters within the African National Congress and has to a great degree shaped our foreign policy. The notion that all of us in the world believe in freedom, that we are against racism, that we will join in solidarity with those who struggle, and yearn for freedom and for political, civil, and socio-economic rights.
These ideals have shaped the manner in which we try to pursue our foreign policy. But, the realpolitik of foreign policy practice has sometimes caused us to be rather surprised, because what we had assumed from the experience of our struggle for freedom – that all of us believe in these rights I’ve referred to – has proven not to be the case when others are free. For example, the people of Palestine are forgotten, the civilians who are killed in the wars we see daily are forgotten. These ideas and belief in multilateralism, in seeking the good of all, which we uphold quite firmly, are often not realized in the practice or the relationships we experience. Having said that, let me come back to my formal comments, so I will today reflect on two major themes.
Firstly, the two-year non-permanent seat of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) – and I refer to non-permanent quite firmly, given that we do believe the United Nations is in need of significant reform in order to ensure inclusion in the Security Council on a more permanent basis of regions that are currently excluded from the important role that it plays and regions that only occupy non-permanent status from time to time.
Secondly, I will reflect on the chairship of the African Union (AU) and I repeat again that our foreign policy is derived both from our experience of struggle, but also – incorporated in the process of negotiating a new constitution – in our constitutional values which articulate the promotion of equality, justice, non-racism, non-sexism and the pursuit of a better world, and that’s international cooperation.
South Africa dedicated its term on the Security Council to the theme of the legacy of President Nelson Mandela, whose values and commitment to peace we commemorated very actively in the year 2018 – the centenary of his birth. We felt we should use our place as a non-permanent member of the UNSC to advance the principles and ideals that President Mandela had lived his life committed to.
Our country believes that peace is critical to development and progress on our continent of Africa. We are in fact very concerned about the ongoing conflicts we see on the continent, as we believe they are a significant barrier to the development that we have to pursue in Africa.
We had hoped that in our election to the non-permanent seat, we would work hard at supporting Africa’s objective of silencing the guns in Africa. Our election to the UNSC was the third term as a non-permanent member, and many observers and Member States have described our role within it as partly successful and somewhat challenging.
We believe that our non-permanent membership provided us with the opportunity to do what we had set out, which was to link our work to that goal of Africa – of silencing the guns. We also used that theme for our chairship from last year of the African Union. We use the term in the Security Council to promote the
peaceful settlement of conflicts through the promotion of preventive diplomacy, inclusive dialogue, and post conflict reconstruction and development.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic which hit our country and many countries on the continent from around March 2020, compounded our challenges and caused us to refocus the agenda to a great degree, and focus on a collective response to combating the pandemic and ensuring that we would have the ability to rebuild a safer world and a safer Africa when we had finalized the work in combating this health crisis.
In our work in the Security Council, we advocated for strengthened partnership and closer cooperation between the UN Security Council and our AU Peace and Security Council. We have always held the view that, in order for the United Nations to successfully exert influence through its decisions, it is very important that it works closely with continental and regional bodies. So in our work and in the Security Council, we advocated and worked hard at building this close relationship.
President Ramaphosa has led the way in encouraging UN and regional and sub-regional collaboration. He called an African and UNSC debate during our Presidency of the Council in order to intensify South Africa’s committed effort toward ending conflicts on the African continent and to further strengthening this partnership we believe is necessary between the AU and the United Nations.
I must say we are very pleased that UN Secretary General Guterres is firmly committed to this relationship with the African Union and to it taking a key role within the continent in helping to address difficult conflicts and contentious matters.
One of the key areas that African members of the Council addressed was that of pursuing this partnership with the UN and ensuring that dedicated attention was given to preventing conflict and assisting countries on the continent to arrive at negotiated settlement of disputes.
This was in response to our practical implementation of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, which stresses the importance of regional arrangements in contributing to international peace and security. However, as we sought to pursue this goal, we came against the challenge of the financing, particularly the AU peacekeeping missions that have been authorized by the Security Council.
Often, we are unable to properly fund these missions and to keep to the duty of maintaining peace and protecting civilians. It is vital that we as the African Union, working with the United Nations identify reliable and sustainable funding for the UN peace missions and the AU peace missions. This has been an ongoing challenge since the establishment of the African Union, and we have to resolve it given emerging conflicts on the continent.
We were very pleased that through our work as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, we were able to draw the non-permanent African members together to form an alliance that would address issues on a common policy basis.
The African members of the Council worked hard to secure commitments for sustainable financing of AU peacekeeping missions, we ensured that we articulated the view that an assessed contribution would be the most reliable avenue of support for UN mandated AU peace operations. We are continuing to argue for this, even as we exit the Security Council, as South Africa and the other non-permanent African members. We underlined the need within the UN for the organization, along with the AU to expedite consideration of this sustainability of funding issue, to ensure that peace support operations are properly supported and can do their work effectively.
We also agreed that the UN should allow us, through cooperation, to address the root causes and drivers of conflict in Africa, including focusing on the challenges of development and good governance, because the absence of good governance and the weakness of democratic institutions is often an underlying reason for the conflicts that emerge in many of our countries. So rather than focus on addressing conflict when it is at the armed level, we believe it is important even in situations of peace to address a number of the underlying issues that give rise to the fights that we see.
We have stressed these matters of addressing development, good governance and democracy – particularly in the debate we presided over on Security Council-built peace building and sustaining of peace, which we call the Security Sector Governance and Reform (SSG/R) initiative.
We were very pleased that the Security Council unanimously adopted our proposed resolution on security sector reform. The resolution builds on the solid policy framework which is laid out by resolution 2151 which was the first thematic Security Council resolution on security sector reform. That one had been piloted by the Republic of Nigeria, again indicating Africa’s long-standing concern with conflict on the continent.
Our new resolution tabled to the Security Council and adoption of resolution 2553, which focuses on security sector reform, was a recognition by the Council that greater emphasis has to be placed on conflict prevention, peacebuilding and sustaining peace by averting relapse into armed conflict.
We agreed that in order to achieve this, states emerging from conflict have to develop and be supported to develop their own inclusive context-specific security sector reform and governance approaches which address the needs of the entire population, with the active involvement of women and youth as well as civil society actors. We also agreed that regional and international partners should partner with states to provide support that is aligned to domestic national security sector reform goals.
As South Africa in the Security Council, we again continued to consistently express our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine and Western Sahara in their quest to achieve self-determination, fundamental freedoms, equality, justice and dignity. We were all surprised to find sometimes that we were a lone voice in seeking solidarity for these peoples. We will also advance the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda, as well as peace and security for youth in all areas where there is conflict.
Following the end of our term on the Security Council, South Africa will continue its commitment to multilateralism and work in other multilateral forums, including the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission to pursue these objectives. We remain committed to a rules-based order characterised by inclusion and equity, and we believe the UN is the primary vehicle for achieving these goals. Of course, all of us know that a lot of ground was lost in multilateralism in the past four years, and I do not need to say more. We need to rebuild multilateral and international trust and cooperation.
Our chairship of the African Union had been under the AU theme for 2020, which was: Silencing the Guns: Creating Conducive Conditions for Africa’s Development. We gave emphasis to an existing AU goal through adoption of this theme, but of course all our careful planning was altered by COVID-19.
We are very pleased, however, that some of our objectives were achieved. For example, the AU agreed in December last year that we should strengthen the AU Master Roadmap of Practical Steps for Silencing the Guns in Africa for a further period of ten years (2021–2030), with periodic reviews every two years to understand the content and context of ongoing conflicts on the continent and to provide support through the African Union, to help countries arrive at conditions of peace and security.
We have also been involved in trilateral negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). We have had several meetings seeking to allow and support the three countries to arrive at a peaceful resolution on the relevant policy matters in an amicable manner and with a win-win outcome. Unfortunately, despite many meetings and much cajoling by President Ramaphosa, myself and other leaders, we have not had the parties reach a final agreement yet. But South Africa has committed that it will remain involved, even beyond its chairing of the African Union in order to assist the parties to come to an acceptable legal agreement on matters relevant to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
I conclude by saying on peace and security, we believe too many people on our continent are still confronted by instability, violence, conflict and underdevelopment. This includes the situations we have in Libya, in the Sahara region, countries in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique, in South Sudan, where we see some positive progress and in eastern DRC. We are also very concerned by recent developments relating to the situation in Western Sahara and we are hopeful that the changes in government in the United States of America will provide more positive impetus on the matter of Western Sahara.
We believe greater attention to peace in all these regions and countries is critical as well as support for resolving these problems jointly from the African Union and the United Nations.
We had to focus as chair on the COVID-19 response. President Ramaphosa as chair of the AU led the development of an African response to the pandemic and ensured consistent African collaboration on this important battle, in addition to ensuring a health sector response.
Through the Bureau of the African Union Heads of State and Government, President Ramaphosa appointed a special envoy to support the continent in mobilizing debt relief mass measures and securing recovery resources. To maintain and provide relief and recovery to economic activities which were hard hit by the lockdown restrictions all our countries had to implement the COVID Unified Initiative, in support of a greater unified Africa and a greater unified global community. One of the outcomes of our interventions was the creation of the COVID-19 African vaccine acquisition task team in support of Africa’s vaccine strategy for COVID-19. This was intended to be responsive to the suspicion that the goal for vaccines to be a global public good would not be respected by the richest countries of the world.
We are working hard, led by President Ramaphosa as current Chair of the AU, to ensure that Africa does enjoy access to vaccines. However, we are seeing that the richest countries of the world have not lived up to this commitment of a global public good, and we are horrified to note that some countries purchased six times the number of vaccines required by their populations. That is preventing many poor countries from enjoying access.
Our president has continued to work hard on this matter, and along with other leaders within the executive of the African Union, has now secured a provisional 270 million vaccine doses for African countries, with at least 50 million set to be available for the crucial period from April to June 2021. We would hope that those who are part of this discussion will assist Africa in ensuring that indeed the vaccine against COVID-19 is a public good and is available to all whether rich or poor.
I thank you very much.
