This thesis should essentially be considered as an exposition of the foreign policy of a "new", apartheid-free South Africa in a post-Cold War international arena, arguing for a pro-active and prudent foreign policy. An important goal of the study is to make as dispassionate and rational as possible a contribution to the debate on South Africa's future foreign policy, national roles and external relations. A further aim of the study shall be to deduce relevant results of perpetual and viable foreign policy orientations and national role models within the framework of policy alternatives to South Africa's decision-makers in the future.

There is a dearth of position papers on international participation in the South African transition. Political parties and organisations in South Africa instead spend most of their time describing various forms of desirous IC intervention after the transition. This might explain why most articles and academic papers on 'the role of the international community' are suffixed - in the 'new South Africa' or 'post-apartheid South Africa' - few focus on the actual transition and then mostly from a systemic perspective, broadly outlining the constraints imposed by the 'new world order'. Perhaps the first serious attempt to address this gap in the debate over South Africa's future was D. Kempton and L. Mosia's 'The International Community in South Africa's Transition to non-racial Democracy' (1992). Before multiparty negotiations collapsed in June 1992, Kempton and Mosia examined the attitudes toward international intervention of most of the CODESA participants, as well as the major actors that had remained outside CODESA. This paper takes up the issue where Kempton and Mosia left off. It tries to explain transitional politics since the IC introduced an on-the-ground presence after the UN Security Council debates on South Africa in July 1992. It asks why, eight months after multiparty talks were suspended, the IC has been unable to revive multiparty negotiations, has apparently had little or no impact on the violence, and despite events like Boipatong and Bisho, still plays a minor peacekeeping role, confined to observer status. The research describes internal and external components of international intervention, examines the rationale behind the agreed forms of international participation, and assesses the viability of the internationally-supported conflict-resolution and transition-management structures that were formed to facilitate the transition. The evidence uncovered by the research leads the author to the conclusion that more of an international role is necessary, and sooner rather than later, but he concedes that this is not feasible, or likely, under the status quo.

Bibliography: leaves 74-78. / With the ending of the apartheid regime and the transition to power of a government of national unity, South Africa is now a legitimate member of the international community. It has joined the Organisation of African Unity, the British Commonwealth, and the Southern African Development Community, and it is busily fostering trade links with Europe, North America, the Far East, and Latin America. Its diplomats have worked to mediate conflicts in Angola and Mozambique, and its president is widely seen as an international statesman and a moral leader of almost unprecedented repute. Yet the new· government continues to operate within South Africa's traditional international paradigm and has not yet developed a unique global role that reflects the country's internal "negotiated revolution". As a result, substantial challenges face efforts to forge a new south African approach to the world. From outside the country, forces unleashed by the fall of communism and the rise of a truly global marketplace mark a volatile and uncertain transition in world history. From the inside, political transition has sparked a redefinition of what it means to be South African, but this has not been reflected in new policies. The Foreign Ministry is widely recognised as a bastion of old-guard stalwarts; the ANC and NP have done little to reconcile their past international experiences; and. the information flow on international political and economic trends has barely improved since April 1994, leaving interest groups and private citizens in the new democracy generally uninformed and therefore unable to help pressure policy. The result is a foreign policy over the past year that has had little vision and few cohesive threads, and has left a score of unresolved issues. The 'new' South Africa's relations with Cuba and China, its policies on illegal immigration, and regional development plans are all issues that require visionary, decisive leadership but for which none has yet been provided. What energy or vision, for example, has South Africa brought to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) since it joined last August? In the global peacekeeping debate, and again with Cuba and China, South Africa has made little effort to recognise more pro-active roles for which it is well equipped. Why is it not asserting itself? Who actually is in charge of its foreign policy? Few thus would deny that a paralysis has settled in on South African foreign policy. A recent analysis in the Weekly Mail lamented, "We are not consistent. We have not formulated clear principles. The formulators of our foreign policy do not consult with the people. The new appointments to our foreign ministry complain of being sidelined. There is no clear break with the past". At the core of this inaction is the fact that policy makers have failed to reconceptualise the way international issues are seen and policy is made. The world has changed and South Africa has changed, both dramatically; yet Cold War debates still divide the policy framework, old style security thinking still dominates higher ranks, and most importantly, the growing inter linkages between domestic and foreign policies in a post-Cold War world have gone largely unheeded. It is thus appropriate to sound a note of urgency: change and uncertainty in the world and dramatic transformation at home combine to make this an inopportune, even dangerous, time to have a directionless foreign policy. The broad purpose· of this paper is to identify the salient external and internal factors that will drive a new South African approach to the world. The first chapter presents a synthesis of dominant global trends, and sets them against the backdrop of major structural changes in international relations. The second chapter discusses change in South Africa in relation to world changes, new state objectives and shifting interest groups, and considers these implications for three major foreign policy areas. The third chapter looks at the policy framework and the ability of policy makers to conceptualise these dual changes and to formulate effective policies. The final chapter offers a 'road map' of policy options towards a true postapartheid, post-Cold War foreign policy.

This thesis argues that F.W. de Klerk's historic February 1990 speech was the end product of a set of circumstances in recent South African and global history which made possible the new phase of transitional politics which South Africa is currently experiencing. It seeks to establish that of all the factors that contributed to change, it was the late 1980s thaw in the Cold War, and its resultant repercussions internationally and regionally which was the catalytic factor which made the new era possible. In all the literature on transition there has been no comprehensive analysis of the plausible link between the two superpowers agreeing in the mid-1980s to abandon confrontational practices and to change their approaches to regional conflicts and the South African government agreeing to negotiate for a new political dispensation. This thesis will seek to establish and analyse such a link. By 1986 there was in certain governmental circles a non-public view that the policy of apartheid had failed both as a solution to the problem of black political aspirations and as a legitimating ideology. Constraining any serious move towards political change was a widely held fear at the top level of government that an accelerated reform process would make South Africa vulnerable to external aggression and internal revolutionary forces. This thesis suggests that the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe and the 'new political thinking' in Soviet foreign policy resulted in the notion of a communist-inspired total onslaught against South Africa losing currency - as did the position of those within the ruling elite who remained dogmatically attached to it. The end of the Cold War is the common thread which links South Africa's international , regional and domestic environments. Two important events occurred in the international and regional arenas, which against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War, strengthened the credibility of the alternative view in government: (i) the October 1986 Reykjavik Summit and (ii) the South African Defence Force setback at Cuito Cuanavale. P.W. Botha's resignation as leader of the National Party and soon after as State President created the political space through which the view of the reformers could emerge as dominant. Recognising that neither the international nor regional environments sustained the beliefs and fears held by the military hawks, F.W. de Klerk was able to capitalise on the ambience of negotiations and apply it to the South African situation. De Klerk's February 1990 speech was therefore the culmination of a process which had its origins in the mid-1980's.