Janis van der Westhuizen

The African National Congress (ANC)’s historic links to the Soviet Union, its interpretation of non-alignment as being about resisting Western imperialism, and its contention that the abrogation by the West of its commitment not to expand further East, shaped the party’s initial response to the Russia-Ukraine war. Whereas certain factions within the ruling ANC interpreted non-alignment in ideological terms, others saw non-alignment rather as a strategy to enhance autonomy. For many South Africans and some government officials this version of non-alignment involved obtaining autonomy through neutrality as a strategy rather than an ideology. These differences of interpretation—coinciding with Pretoria’s role as host of the BRICS Summit where Putin was expected to appear—put South Africa between a rock and a hard place, triggering domestic opposition. However, this dilemma also enabled proponents of non-alignment as a strategy to prevail, culminating in South Africa adopting a more balanced position since June 2023.

In the face of growing restrictions against Huawei in much of ‘the West’ because of the US’ efforts to portray its 5G roll out as a security threat, most of the developing world has resisted such efforts. By drawing on Balzacq’s analytical framework - centred on the degree of congruence between the audience, the securitizing agent’s ability to construct a convincing frame of reference, the role of contextual factors, and securitization counterclaims - it is argued that 5G securitization failed in Brazil and South Africa (2019-2022). Although the contextual factors in both cases were similar (economic interests with China, Huawei’s established role and access to Covid vaccines), in South Africa, narratives of development and cost/benefit considerations overshadowed perceptions of security risk. In Brazil in contrast, some factions within the Bolsonaro government agreed to the US’ securitization frame, whilst others, citing the risk of damaging relations with Beijing and the sheer costs of replacing Huawei infrastructure, disagreed. In both cases, the contextual factors diminished Huawei as a source of risk, especially in the Brazilian case, tipping the scale in support of those seeking to maintain good relations with Beijing.

How do deeply unequal cities in the Global South project soft power, and what are the tensions and contradictions that emerge when they do? Cities’ strategies to enhance their international appeal can be gauged through three interlocking or complementary approaches: first, leveraging the strategic value of events and associated services; second, developing iconic architecture and mega-projects; and third, making themselves attractive to the so-called “creative class.” Drawing on a brief comparative analysis of Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, these strategies are assessed in relation to the dynamics of soft power and soft disempowerment. Although Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town share formidable resources to generate soft power, their societal complexities of crime and violence cast a heavy disempowering shadow on their innovative soft power strategies.

Whereas much of the literature on status and domestic audiences analyzes how international achievement helps shore up domestic legitimacy, analyses regarding the opposite direction—how the lack of domestic support undercuts status signaling—remain rare. Mega-events constitute a highly public and visible example of conspicuous consumption as a form of status signaling. However, in rising democracies state elites are obliged to frame the benefits of hosting a World Cup in both instrumental dimensions and expressive virtues. In Brazil, the political fallout from the economic crisis, however, made it very difficult for state elites to rely on the expressive value of Brazil's status as World Cup host to subdue domestic opposition driven by instrumental logics. In contrast, for South Africans, the 2010 World Cup not only became an “exceptional status moment” but also constituted a “nation founding moment,” which meant that the expressive significance of hosting the first World Cup in Africa mitigated similar instrumental criticism.

Drawing on the layered model of identity change, this paper identifies three layers shaping South Africa’s foreign policy identity and how it is enacted through various roles. The most sedimented, fundamental layer least subject to change involves South Africa’s assertion of its sovereignty and its quest for legitimacy. The middle layer provides more exact demarcations between Self and Other, highlighting South Africa’s role in being a leader, mediator and bridge. Finally, the top, least institutionalized layer reveals that, although Pretoria is no longer subject to the hard misplacement of the apartheid years, South Africans’ sense of exceptionalism to the rest of the continent in the post-apartheid era and other Africans’ deep ambivalence toward South Africa, continue. The article highlights continuities and discontinuities between the apartheid and post-apartheid periods of statehood.

Whilst there is no shortage of analyses on the politics of regions in International Relations, little attention has been paid to states who perceive that they do not properly fit in the regions they happen to be located in. These are the ‘misplaced states’: they stand out not so much because of material capacities but because they espouse an identity, manifested in different ways, in marked contrast to the states around them. This article asks what causes this process of a change in identity amongst misplaced states in different parts of the world. Comparing across regions, it analyses why and how states reconstruct their identities in order to enhance or deemphasise their degrees of regional conformity. By focusing on the ‘role-location process’ rooted in role theory, this article contributes to the literature by conceptualising the phenomenon of ‘misplacement.’ A state is misplaced when there is mismatch between its aspirations and others’ expectations for it. The article also details how and why misplacement occurs and studies its implications both for the states in question as well as for the politics of their geographical regions.

Development cooperation is a foreign policy tool marked by deep-seated conflicts of interest and dilemmas of particular relevance to second-tier and non-nuclear countries that aim to change their international status and role. Building on the concept of ‘graduation dilemma’, this article compares specific dilemmas that Brazil and South Africa face in their foreign policies concerning the development cooperation agenda at three levels: the domestic, the regional and the global level. The research question guiding this analysis is: how does the graduation dilemma manifest in relation to Brazil and South Africa’s role in development cooperation?