Our foreign policy circus makes us look amateurish

THE past week has been a hive of diplomatic activity with the 66th session of the UN general assembly in session in New York.

The diplomatic agenda, at least in the dominant western press, has been largely about the recognition of two entities. First, every newspaper or news outlet from major newspapers including Le Monde in Paris, the New York Times or South Africa’s leading papers including The Times and Business-Day, discussed and/or editorialised the drive by Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, to have Palestine accepted as a state by the United Nations. As a result, major powers have been jockeying around trying to find a solution to what is likely to be a major impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Evidently, this is an issue that is largely outside the African agenda and African states are less likely to play a meaningful role in shaping outcomes there. Therefore, their role would be considered auxiliary and solely limited to the General Assembly. Second, the recognition of the Transitional National Council (TNC) as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people by the United Nations by about 114 votes, enjoyed widespread international coverage, albeit to a lesser degree. One could assume that this item might have enjoyed more muted coverage because the major western powers, including the United States, France, and Great Britain, and a good number of African states, particularly in West, Central and East Africa had already given their approval to the TNC as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. Regrettably, Namibia is one of the few countries that voted against the draft resolution adopted by an overwhelming majority of states. The main argument put forward by Namibia as part of a reactionary group of states when it comes to human security-norms, lies in the view that the United Nations should be an organisation founded on the rule of law. If it was driven by principle, this could have been a laudable position. However, the logic behind these nays appears to be of a different sort. In reality, the main explanation for this position is nothing but a pathetic camouflage of Cold-War logic in defense of national sovereignty. And much of it also has to do with the weak legitimacy on which our states are governed. The case of Angola and the fragility of the weak states in this region provide the sub-text driving our rejection of the draft resolution concerning the TNC. Clearly, Namibia and the liberation movements of Southern Africa have not yet recovered from the slumber of the Cold War, and our foreign-policy positions are constantly looking to the past for inspiration. In essence, this sounds more like despair. Even if events and the norms that drive interventions have progressed, Namibia seems hell-bent on using the same template and reflexes of the past. More so, it is pretty hypocritical for Namibia to speak about the ‘rule of law’ within the United Nations whilst we cannot defend the same norms and values within a regional or African context. We would have been credible as a country had we been defenders of rule of law within this region and beyond and argued for the UN to do likewise. Yet, we have been largely indifferent to Robert Mugabe’s heavy-handedness with the opposition in Zimbabwe; extremely cosy with the kleptocracy under Eduardo Dos Santos in Angola; and we have not uttered a word about Libya under Muammar Gaddafi about the rule of law when he muscled opposition figures and human rights activists in that country. To take such a position on the TNC is not credible and makes a mockery of what the foreign policy of a democracy should look like. As I have argued in previous pieces, our foreign policy seems to have interests without these being articulated by any values and norms. A recent interview with the Special Advisor to the President on Foreign Affairs in the government daily New Era (‘Nato’s actions in Libya are troubling’, Toivo Ndjebela, 09 September 2011) while rich in explanations and motivations, did not list any values or norms that drive our policy. The absence of such is what could explain why we would rally (contrary to our internal democratic order) behind some of the most oppressive and totalitarian regimes of the world. The circus we created in New York with regard to the TNC and prior to that our refusal to accept the flag of the TNC at the embassy in Windhoek, merely attests to this lopsided view of foreign policy. It is about time that we end the circus and progressively anchor our foreign policy into the future. Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD-fellow in political science and researcher at the Center for Political Research at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. He is currently a guest-lecturer in European Studies at Rouen Business School, France.

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