South Africa’s 30-year-old democracy is in uncharted waters. The African National Congress (ANC)—the party that led South Africa to liberation from apartheid minority rule—has, for the first time since 1994, failed to secure an absolute majority and therefore cannot form a government on its own.
As negotiations over a national unity government (or some other governing arrangement) enter their final stage, South Africa’s stance on foreign-policy matters could become a source of tension. The Democratic Alliance (DA), the party that got the second-largest number of votes, is anti-Russia and pro-West and would want to push closer relations between South Africa and the West.
The other parties with which the ANC could form a government—such as the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party—would want South Africa to turn its back on the West and forge closer relations with Russia and Cuba. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, which finished fourth, is decidedly pro-Russia and anti-Israel.
In the lead-up to the election, foreign policy became a much-debated issue in the influential white-owned online publication the Daily Maverick, with Ukraine and Gaza taking center stage. There was often a strongly expressed view that Pretoria should directly align with Western capitals and that its nonaligned policy in fact meant affiliation with Russia, China, and Iran.
But most South African voters were instead preoccupied with domestic issues such as job creation, service delivery, and improving people’s standard of living. Of the parties that polled in the top six and are possible partners in an ANC-led government, three did not even mention foreign-policy issues in their election manifestos. The DA had seven priorities, all of them dealing with domestic issues. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) did not mention foreign policy, nor did the Patriotic Alliance (PA).
The ANC has long been committed to nonalignment. During South Africa’s liberation struggle, the ANC received strong support from the Soviet Union and Cuba and was aligned with groups such as the PLO and the Irish Republican Army.
At the time, the United States and Britain had declared the ANC and its leaders terrorists and communists. It was only in 1986, pressured by the global anti-apartheid movement, that the U.S. Congress voted to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa. This has led to a juggling act in foreign relations as there has been an enduring sense of affiliations beyond the West but also a realization that South Africa needs to keep the West on side for its economic growth and stability.
The ANC’s current foreign policy is focused on strengthening the global south through institutions such as BRICS. This is informed by the view that the current global system is skewed against the interests of the global south, as it perpetuates extractive policies that prevent developing countries from benefiting from their own natural resources.
For the ANC, strengthening BRICS will enable global south countries to work together to improve their economies. The ANC has also been strongly committed to reform of the global governance system, including the United Nations Security Council. It wants an international system that is more representative of the voices of the global south, with, for instance, Africa getting a permanent seat at the table in the Security Council and a greater focus on multilateralism over powerful countries going it alone.
The ANC’s long-standing support for Cuba and the Palestinians was never welcomed by the West but did not cause ruptures in Western capitals, where it was seen as an anomaly resulting from the history of the liberation struggle. Cuba, for instance, played a decisive role in the Angolan civil war, fought by the anti-communist UNITA rebel movement and the South African army against the communist government led by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola—a conflict that severely strained the apartheid regime’s military in the final years of its rule.
However, the nonaligned position that Pretoria took after the Russian invasion of Ukraine generated significant tensions with some Western governments. Tensions peaked in May 2023, when the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, controversially called a press conference to claim that South Africa had sold weapons to Russia. Brigety provided no evidence publicly in support of this claim. The strongly Western-aligned white media at home also heavily criticized Pretoria’s nonaligned stance, leading to growing fractures in the public sphere.
The ANC has responded by insisting that its decision to remain nonaligned and to support the resolution of conflict via dialogue is in accordance with one of the founding principles of democratic South Africa and the way in which the end of apartheid was achieved via a negotiated settlement. It continues to maintain relations with both Western governments and the Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Cuban governments.
Yet this remains contentious with Western governments and liberal opinion at home. Most of the critique has been driven by an expectation for South Africa to unquestioningly take the side of the West and NATO. However, some of it has been animated by concern for human rights and respect of international law. These tensions have been escalated by Pretoria’s decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Pro-West opinion in South Africa sees a contradiction between South Africa’s neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war and its clear support for Palestinians following the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Opinion critical of the West sees a contradiction between Washington’s celebration of the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to charge Russian President Vladimir Putin of Russia with war crimes and the denunciation of South Africa for taking Israel to the ICJ on charges of genocide against the people of Gaza.
The DA, which enjoys the support of just over 20 percent of the electorate, is a free market-oriented party that is strongly pro-West. It would prefer Pretoria to pivot toward the West in much the same way as Kenya has recently. It has been strongly pro-Israel in the past, but—aware that this would not be well received by many voters and perhaps especially the large Muslim minority in Cape Town, where it governs—it sought to keep this issue on the back burner during the recent campaign.
If the DA is included in the next government in some way, it will certainly try to encourage the country to align more closely with the West.
The MK party, which won the third-highest number of votes in the national poll and the most votes in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, is a grudge party formed to counter, weaken, and ultimately remove President Cyril Ramaphosa from power—and to get back at the people who led the charge to oust its founder, former President Jacob Zuma.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its leader’s many legal problems, the party is also highly critical of South Africa’s current legal system and wants to see it upended as it plans to “scrap the 1996 constitution and replace it with a parliamentary system with or without a codified constitution.”
MK’s foreign-policy outlook is decisively anti-West. The party wants to maintain and increase relations with Russia, Cuba, and BRICS. It places great store in BRICS developing an alternative currency for international trade and wants South Africa to exit what it calls the “weaponized ICC,” seeing the ICC as primarily targeting Africans.
MK won only 14 percent of the national vote, but if it makes common cause with like-minded people within the ANC, it could mount a serious effort to push the ANC away from its nonaligned policy and toward close links with countries hostile to the West. Indeed, Zuma has a personal relationship with Putin and is very committed to closer ties with Russia.
Another anti-West player is the EFF party, which is often erroneously referred to as a leftist party in the international media. The EFF does use some language of the left; however, it is more similar to the national socialist parties of 1930s Europe than a modern left-wing party. The party has a militarized posture, and its authoritarian leader, Julius Malema, often makes vitriolic anti-white and anti-Indian statements.
One of his most startling utterances was when, in a 2018 interview, he maintained that the EFF had “not called for the killing of white people, at least for now.” Despite these racist tendencies, the EFF has not followed most of the other parties, including MK, by taking a xenophobic line against African migrants. On the contrary, it identifies as pro-African in that it wants a united Africa under the leadership of one leader and wants South Africa’s borders opened to all people of African origin.
On foreign issues further afield, the EFF is unquestioningly pro-Russia. The party is clear that “it will never support a body that enjoys protection from the United States.” It sees the war in Ukraine as a “war against NATO disguised as Ukraine that seeks to expand its territory in Ukraine in order to get closer to Russia.” The EFF also wants all foreign military bases on the African continent to be removed as it sees these as monitoring vessels used to displace the rightful owners of the land when minerals are discovered. (It is unclear if this only refers to Western bases, as the EFF wants military collaboration with China and Russia.)
Furthermore, the EFF wants South Africa and the rest of the continent to leave the ICC and have it replaced by an African court to judge African cases. Much like MK, the EFF has some potential allies within the ANC, and there is some possibility that it could shift the ANC’s foreign-policy position in a coalition government.
The two other smaller parties that may be included, the IFP and the PA, are both very hostile to African migrants. The IFP has since its inception in the apartheid years been a conservative and pro-West organization, while the PA, another populist party, is very strongly pro-Israel, something it has justified through the language of evangelical Christianity.
As the ANC seeks governing partners, the country’s foreign policy will need to be carefully negotiated. The ANC will resist surrendering its autonomy in this arena and will be very suspicious of what it sees as a DA demand to allow Pretoria’s foreign policy to be dictated by Western capitals. At the same time, Ramaphosa will not want to break relations with the West and make his government an international pariah by uncritically linking itself to anti-democratic forces at home.
Negotiations to form a new government are currently up in the air. On June 6, Ramaphosa announced that the party had decided to form a national unity government and that parties entering the cabinet would have to show “respect for the constitution and the rule of law.”
If this is how things play out, there is likely to be considerable continuity in foreign policy, with the ANC rejecting both the liberal demands for an unambiguously pro-West policy and the authoritarian nationalists’ call for an unambiguously pro-Russia and pro-China policy. Within this generally nonaligned position, direct support for Cuba and the Palestinians is likely to continue.
The ANC, buoyed by its recent successes at the ICJ, is likely to feel an increased sense of confidence on the international stage, even as its power fades at home. In 2025, South Africa will be hosting the G-20 and assume its presidency, and there will be opportunities for the country to showcase itself and further its foreign-policy goals and reinvigorate its economic fortunes—something that will require stabilizing relations with Britain and the United States, its traditional trading partners, as well as sustaining relations with China and Russia.
Unless the ANC finds itself in a situation in which it must depend on the DA or the EFF and MK—separately or together—in order to govern, it will seek to sustain its nonaligned balancing act.
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