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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Seven ways to change the balance of power in southern Africa
Author:Vale, PeterISNI
Year:1992
Periodical:Nigerian Journal of International Affairs
Volume:18
Issue:1
Pages:78-93
Language:English
Geographic terms:Southern Africa
South Africa
Subject:foreign policy
Abstract:The expectations of change in southern Africa will remain no more than expectations until a new configuration can control South Africa's grip on regional affairs. The lessons are clear: the present order in South Africa will have to go before this can happen. South Africa's New Diplomacy only served narrow partisan interests. It merely replaced South Africa's early military domination of the southern African region with a mix of diplomatic and economic levers, in the hope that this would lead to international support and the ending of sanctions and thereby give the government of F.W. De Klerk the necessary international legitimacy to dictate both the process and pace of domestic change. For all its promise, the political change under way in South Africa has fogged, not cleared, the prospects for a new order in southern Africa. The long-term challenge is how best to regulate the region's prevailing balance of forces. This entails stopping South Africa's destructive power, finding a lasting political solution in South Africa, pushing South Africa towards democracy, examining all regional institutions in terms of their contribution towards long-term development, probing the potential of the institutional base underpinning South Africa's regional power, lobbying the World Bank and the IMF to serve the best interests of the region rather than those of distant capital, and planning for contingencies at the regional level. Notes, ref., sum. (Also published in: South African Review, no. 6 (1992), p. 424-435, under the title 'South Africa's 'New Diplomacy'.')