Date: 22/04/2010
Source: Democratic Alliance
Title: DA: Mokgalapa: Speech by DA Member of Parliament on the International Relations and Cooperation Budget vote, National Assembly

Thank you Honorable Chairperson, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Members and Guests.

The S.A. Foreign Policy is always perceived by the general public as being elitist in nature. This perception means that our Foreign Policy is inaccessible to the ordinary citizens of which it should serve and represent. This chairperson requires a new way of doing business by the department in an effort to ensuring that our Foreign Policy decision making process reach the grass roots.

One of the programmes of the department is that of public diplomacy and protocol services with, the primary purpose of communicating South Africa's role and position in international relations in the domestic and international arenas. This however has been relegated to mainly providing protocol services as opposed to strengthening Public Diplomacy. This trend should change. South African citizens should be involved in Foreign Policy decision making.

The 21st century calls for the government to modernize international relations differently, with the growing influence of mass media, multicorporations and strong lobby groups who has access to resources. It has become essential that the department should partner with these bodies to ensure effective communication of our Foreign Policy's objectives. This can be done through the public diplomacy programme, which will promote the national interest of our country through understanding, informing and influencing foreign audiences. This will help reduce the degree to which misperceptions and misunderstanding complicate our relations with the world. It can also assist in addressing xenophobia by explaining to ordinary grass roots people about South Africa's international obligations to the world and in Africa.

Public diplomacy should not be only state-centric, but primarily multi-centric. We often see a press statement or advert by DIRCO about its Foreign Policy Objectives and explanation of why a particular position was taken by government. This leads to confusion and misperceptions.

Public diplomacy also means that challenges and solutions do not come from states alone, but also non-state actors can contribute. This is evolution - from hard power to soft power approach. It is the only way to close the gap between domestic and foreign policy. In the modern world order countries have become brands that should be marketable in a global competitive economy, hence the need to influence the private sector to instill investor confidence and nation building.

The challenge with South Africa's foreign policy is that we do not have our common national interest. The question is what our national interests in relations with China are? Dialogue should be encouraged between government, citizens and non-state actors to define our national interests. We need clear coordination and engagement of stakeholders, clear policy positions of major international importance e.g. Dalai Lama, Myanmmar, UN resolutions, AL BASHIR all have an impact on how we communicate with the people on the ground.


South Africa's image has been dented by some of our social problems like crime and xenophobic attacks; hence we need to strengthen our public diplomacy to make an impact on promoting our international image. The key word on this is (coherency) in our messages to the world, e.g. "nationalization issues". It creates confusion both locally and internationally if not clearly articulated to the world as recently experienced in the state visit to the UK.

The Annual Report of the Portfolio Committee on International Relations and Cooperation as well as the year performance review highlight the importance of public diplomacy as the no1 priority of committee oversight work. And the committee has yet to conduct any of its plans to engage stakeholders. The University of Limpopo and the University of Cape Town are two major institutions to conduct public diplomacy. We are moving too slowly in this regard and we call on the chairperson to move with speed to address this.

The I.G.D on review of the DIRCO Annual report highlights the following about SA foreign policy:

Lack of strategy (what is South Africa's long term strategy for the next 10-15yrs)
State visits at home and abroad by the president are of what diplomatic capital value, i.e. what do ordinary citizens get out of it?
What is the desired capital diplomatic value in bilateral and multilaterals? Is it only for participation and policy outcomes? No influence, hence we call for review of some of this bilateral and multilaterals.
Extensive diplomatic presence - What strategic value derived by SA Partnerships of IBSA, BRIC (do we know what we are getting out of it).
Inadequate use of soft power tools persists, public, cultural, sports, conference


The DA welcomes the proposed white paper on the Foreign Service Act (public diplomacy) that will help in engagement of citizens in foreign policy decision making. This is long overdue. We are however concerned about the budget allocation to this programme. Only R232 million allocated to this task means the department is not serious about this important function. The department indicates that the overall expenditure of this programme will decrease by an average of 1.9% as there is no further expenditure for Presidential inauguration. Does this mean that only protocol is essential as opposed to popular participation?


Does our foreign policy objectives in SADC have impact and influence, if so why does Zimbabwe still remain a problem? If we continue to commit ourselves to the promotion of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms then why do we engage dubious Governments? Why are we quiet on Brummar, Myanmmar? We need to revert back to our core principles of foreign policy to guide our relations with the world.

In conclusion Chairperson. The Question is how we align our foreign policy with our national priorities in order to respond to unemployment, education, health, crime, rural development. To achieve this we must be more strategic rather than operational. We must shift from quantity to quality. How do we involve our citizens in understanding our foreign policy goals and how do we explain our foreign policy objects and positions to our citizens and involve private sector, media, NGO, etc to brand South Africa commonly as a destination of choice. How do we make sure that we do not have membership and partnerships for the sake of it? The answer is the modernization of foreign policy through public diplomacy.

I thank you.