Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil. (Politics)
South Africa’s 1996 Constitution makes provision for relatively autonomous provincial
administrations, which share responsibility with the national government for important
functional areas while also exercising exclusive authority over others. Although the
Constitution is not explicit on the distribution of foreign policy competence, the dominant
interpretation among South African policy-makers is that this functional area is the
exclusive domain of the national government. Consequently, the foreign policy-making
process in the country has over the years been dominated by the national executive.
Even so, since 1995 the interplay of a set of push and pull factors has encouraged all
provinces to assume an active and direct international role, to the extent that provincial
international relations or paradiplomacy has become an important feature of South
Africa’s international relations.
This study examines the paradiplomacy of the South African provinces of Gauteng, the
North West and the Western Cape against the backdrop of a relatively weak scholarly
and public discourse of the phenomenon in the country. Through an in-depth and
empirically based analysis of the three case studies, the inquiry generates insight into
the nature and meaning of paradiplomacy in South Africa, as a contribution to the
development of alternative accounts of a phenomenon whose scholarship is still heavily
dominated by Western perspectives.
The study finds that paradiplomacy has evolved in South Africa as a predominantly
functional project, which has little significance for the authority of the national
government over the country’s foreign policy and international relations. The provincial
governments in Gauteng, the North West and the Western Cape engage in international
relations primarily as a strategy to harness the opportunities of globalisation and
economic interdependence, in the interest of the socio-economic development of their
respective jurisdictions. This ‘developmental paradiplomacy’ is conditioned to a large
extent by the limited provincial powers on foreign affairs, strong centripetal forces in
South Africa’s political system, as well as the pervasive influence of the post-apartheid discourse on socio-economic transformation. Thus, although all three provinces
examined conduct their international relations with relative autonomy and in ways that
have at times undermined the country’s international reputation and attracted Pretoria’s
ire, these activities are consciously defined within the framework of the country’s foreign
policy and, in some cases, are executed in close collaboration with the national
government. In a sense, therefore, provinces conceive of their international role as that
of agents or champions of Pretoria’s foreign policy agenda.
The key findings of this study, especially as they pertain to the nature and significance
of paradiplomacy in South Africa, highlight the North-South geopolitical cleavage in the
manifestation of the phenomenon. On the one hand, the South African case resonates
with the experience in other developing countries like India, China, Malaysia and
Argentina, where paradiplomacy evolves under the shadow of national foreign policy
processes. On the other hand, the findings contrast with the experience in most
countries in Europe and North America where questions of nationalism, sub-national
identity and the sovereign authority for international representation have contributed to
defining the international agency of sub-national governments.