Abstract
The concept or call to African agency can be regarded as the way in which Africa’s historical, political and socio-economic context informs how one is able to exercise power, especially in international relations. This conceptualisation is used colloquially and academically. However, in this call, it is unclear how individuals are able to operationalise or implement African agency and if it can translate to a state’s bureaucratic machinery and into action. Moreover, African perspectives are not homogenous and cannot be generalised. And so this study begins this exploration from a South African interpretation as a potential departure to understand the potential operationalisation of African agency as agentic behaviours and leadership within a governmental bureaucracy.
The study is directed by a broad question, how is South Africa’s African agency operationalized in its governmental bureaucracies? With five sub-questions that asked participants to reflected on; 1) What is African agency?, 2) What may link African agency and agentic behaviour?, 3) How does gender play a role in pursuing South Africa’s African agency within the parameters of agentic leadership?, 4) Where is the link between the legal-rational authority found in South Africa’s governmental bureaucracy and agency building?, and 5) What is the role of a bureaucracy to facilitate how individuals relate the concept of African agency to their roles and performance?
The study made use of Charmaz’s Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) as a methodology and theoretical framework; a qualitative methodology focusing on inductive reasoning and analysis of empirical data, which contributes to generating new theories. This allows the study to locate the perceptions and understandings of participants at the centre of its enquiry. The sampling methods included purposeful and theoretical sampling, drawn from a population that contributes to the South African foreign service, including government departments, academics, political party members, business and civil society. During this process, 21 interviews were undertaken, of which, one participant retracted their participant in the study. Therefore, the data of 20 interviews was used. This data was analysed through the initial, focused,
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axial and theoretical coding process, that further highlighted 15 themes and 12 subthemes.
While the study draws a number of conclusions, the most significant findings made by the study is located in the theoretical coding findings. The theoretical coding outcomes show that a vision, or goal, and structures are facilitators of agency, but individuals are implementors of agency through agentic behaviours. The individual plays a fundamental role in the application of African agency, in the context of South Africa’s foreign affairs governmental bureaucracy. A bureaucracy, as a tool for channelling and implementing agency holds value, but this is dependent on the level of professionalisation in the public service and how the public service is able to relate to African interpretations.
Keywords: African agency, Agentic leadership, foreign affairs bureaucracy, governmental bureaucracy, foreign service, South Africa