Afro-Continentalism: Pan-Africanism in Post-Settlement South Africa’s Foreign Policy

Abstract

In his book In the Twilight of the Revolution (2009), which is also the subject of this review article, Kwandiwe Kondlo argues inter alia that: ‘. . . the Africanist orientation of the PAC [Pan-Africanist Congress] was appropriated in the policies of [South Africa’s] . . . new democratic government(s), especially during the period of former President Thabo Mbeki’ (2009: 282). This author critically examines Kondlo’s assertion in the context of South Africa’s post-apartheid period and argues that successive South African governments played pivotal roles in helping to shape Africa’s evolving inter-state system through diplomacy and the politics of partnership. In that regard, he argues that South Africa’s aim is to promote Continentalism (agreements or policies that favour regionalization or regional co-operation between states, or deep and regulated forms of regional co-operation between nations within a continent), a new post-Cold War foreign policy paradigm on the continent, which will assist in the consolidation of the idea of a union of African states that dawned with the birth of the African Union (AU), created to replace the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU). He insists that, in the context of Kondlo’s assertion, African Continentalism, as opposed to Pan-Africanism, which advocates the amalgamation of existing independent African states into a bloc, represents a process that encourages African states to band together to create new norms, principles, institutions, and political structures, and agree to live by such structures and in harmony with each other. To buttress his argument, the author examines Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance project as the corollary of African Continentalism on which South Africa’s Africa policy was anchored during and after his presidency.