Where to from here for South Africa’s foreign policy?

Disquiet is being expressed in global capitals about the current travails afflicting the South African economy and body politic. Convulsive strikes have been paralysing one of the country’s central economic mainstays and leading export sector, the mining industry, while a violent truck drivers’ strike has claimed at least one life. The public education system, among other key national sectors, is laboring under weak governance, with activists resorting to the justice system to compel government action. The political elite is preoccupied with an intra-party battle that was recently intensified by the official opening of the nominations process for the new leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), to be elected in December at the party’s elective conference. In all of this, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain distance between the country’s domestic problems and its international image. While previously, President Jacob Zuma was seen as a well-meaning, friendly, if uncommonly polygamous, leader in Western capitals, he is now more widely viewed as lacking in the leadership necessary to steer South Africa out of mounting domestic troubles.