There have been over a dozen of them since 1994: men (and very few women) from the president’s close-knit inner circle who are sent out to the world’s crisis hot spots on fact-finding missions, and to transmit South Africa’s message of peace and reconciliation.

South African special envoys have been sent as far as Palestine, Iraq and Sri Lanka and – much closer to home – to Zimbabwe, Madagascar and Lesotho.

This follows a worldwide trend of ‘celebrity diplomacy,’ where former heads of state and other well-known figures are sent to weigh in on belligerents in complex crises.

Academics, however, say that although the dispatching of special envoys has become an important tool of foreign policy (at significant cost to the taxpayer), it is difficult to track their success. This is mainly because mandates of special envoys are not made public and they rarely communicate about what they are doing. Special envoys are also very often close advisors to the president, and their increasingly visible role in foreign policy could complicate relations between the presidency and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation.

It doesn’t always make the ambassador look good when a minister is dispatched on a fact-finding mission. Those in power, meanwhile, say the shroud of secrecy permits the envoys to do a better job. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki, for example, has always maintained the need for ‘quiet diplomacy’ in troubled Zimbabwe. Mbeki again last month argued for confidentiality amidst criticism against his attempts to keep a report of his two envoys to Zimbabwe in 2002, Constitutional Court judges Sisi Khampepe and Dikgang Moseneke, under wraps.In a detailed response to this criticism published by the Mail&Guardian on 28 November, Mbeki says that his battle to keep the report out of the public eye was fought on a matter of principle. He insists that the aim is not to conceal the advice by the judges, who constituted a judicial observer mission, from the public. ‘It is simply to ensure that the quality of this advice is not compromised by fear or incentive that it might get into the public domain,’ writes Mbeki.

Jo-Ansie van Wyk, an associate professor at the University of South Africa who has conducted an in-depth study about the role of special envoys in South Africa, disagrees with Mbeki. She says that greater transparency is needed in the foreign policy initiatives directed by the South African president – the country’s ‘uber-diplomat’.

This is specifically related to the mandate of the special envoys. Mbeki, for example, argues that judges’ mission ‘exceeded both its capacity and its mandate’ and was therefore not taken into account when South Africa stamped the 2002 Zimbabwe elections ‘legitimate’. Yet details of this mandate were never known until the Khampepe report was released to the Mail&Guardian through a court order last month.

Van Wyk says reporting about presidential foreign policy initiatives had been much more detailed under former president Nelson Mandela than they are now. Mandates, timelines and outcomes of mediation in places like Burundi were published and the success of the mediation could be measured. This has changed since Mbeki’s mediation on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Zimbabwe.

‘Zimbabwe changed a lot of things and one has the impression [that] the presidency has become far less generous with information since then,’ says Van Wyk, who spoke on the subject of special envoys at the 80th birthday celebrations of the South African Institute of International Affairs in Pretoria recently.

During Mbeki’s presidency, special envoys were sent to a wide range of countries and crises, including to Iraq (Aziz Pahad, then deputy foreign minister), Burundi (Jacob Zuma, then deputy president; Charles Nqakula, former minister; and diplomat Welile Nhlapo), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former minister Sydney Mufamadi) and the Great Lakes Region (diplomat Kingsley Mamabolo).

President Zuma has sent envoys to Palestine (Mac Maharaj, presidential spokesperson and Pahad), Sudan (Nqakula), Madagascar (Marius Fransman, former deputy minister), Zambia (diplomat Lindiwe Zulu) and Zimbabwe (Zulu and Nqakula). Most recently, Zuma has sent Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to Lesotho, South Sudan and Sri Lanka. He also last month dispatched Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe, to Nigeria to negotiate the tricky release of the remains of South Africans who died in the collapse of a church building in Lagos.

Understandably, details of sensitive negotiations cannot always be divulged. Certainly, few would argue with the fact that under certain circumstances it is better to keep a low profile, especially when warring factions can’t be seen to be talking to mediators.

Veteran mediator Roelf Meyer, who acts as an advisor in tricky conflict situations around the world, says although it is not always a straightforward issue, adhering to the principle of transparency achieves the best results. ‘We learnt from our own experience that it is much better to communicate and inform the public: that way we [have] built up trust – and it [has] paid off,’ Meyer said when asked about the confidentiality of mediation. In certain circumstances a measure of discretion could be advisable, particularly in the beginning stages of negotiations, he says.

Currently, Meyer – together with former deputy minister of international relations and cooperation, Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim – is involved in advising the government of Madagascar on how to advance reconciliation forward in that country.Meyer’s consultancy works in tandem with SADC, which last month sent South African Minister of State Security, David Mahlobo, to head a mission of the troika on defence, politics and security to Madagascar. South Africa is currently chairing the troika. Meyer and Ramaphosa of course both have excellent diplomatic credentials, having constituted the ‘dream team’ who negotiated South Africa out of an impasse and on a path to democracy in the early 1990s.

Former heads of state are often ‘outsourced’ as special envoys to multilateral institutions like SADC and the African Union (AU), because it is believed they will have more gravitas to weigh in on tricky situations. Mbeki and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, for example, are in high demand at the AU.

Mbeki is most known for his work as chairperson of the high-level implementation panel on Sudan. Obasanjo has served on several committees and panels of the AU and is currently head of the AU Commission of Enquiry on South Sudan, which is looking into human rights abuses during the year-long civil war in that country.

The United Nations (UN) has 44 special envoys and representatives in Africa. These envoys all report to the UN Security Council, and these reports are almost invariably made public. In some cases, publication is delayed to give countries a right to reply before reports are placed in the public domain. This should be the case in South Africa as well.

President Jacob Zuma’s last two emissaries – to Lesotho and Nigeria – have, fortunately, been more transparent about their work there. Ramaphosa has been good about communicating his successes in Lesotho, where he has mediated with the fractious political elite following an attempted coup on 30 August this year.

He gives feedback on progress during regular press conferences in Lesotho and South Africa. This is in contrast to Ramaphosa’s missions to South Sudan and Sri Lanka, which are less visible. Radebe also achieved a measurable outcome in Lagos, with most of the remains of the deceased having been repatriated. Special envoys can clearly achieve results, depending on their status and the specifics of their mandates.

Written by Liesl Louw-Vaudran, ISS Consultant