'Our identity is our currency': South Africa, the responsibility to protect and the logic of African intervention

• Published in: Conflict, security & development Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 509 - 534
• Main Authors: Verhoeven, Harry, Murthy, C.S.R., Soares de Oliveira, Ricardo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 08.08.2014; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Africa; Citizens; Convergence; Emerging powers; Foreign Policy; Identity; Ideology; Intellectuals; Intervention; Peoples Republic of China; Political History; Responsibilities; Russia; Security; South Africa; South Africa; Libya; China; Russia
• ISSN: 1467-8802; 1478-1174
• DOI: 10.1080/14678802.2014.930594

Heavyweights of South Africa's ruling African National Congress claim that the responsibility to protect citizens in the case of an unwilling or unable government is an African concept, owned by the continent: rooted in the security-development crisis of the past few decades, Pretoria stresses that there is an intellectual and political history of intervention, separate from Western conceptions of R2P. While the conception of an African responsibility to protect has come to constitute a major pillar of South African foreign policy, this is not without its critics-domestic or abroad-and, as the Libya case exemplifies, often presents decision-makers in Pretoria with tough real world dilemmas. South Africa shares the intense scepticism of China and Russia about Western claims of value-based foreign policies. But much as anti-imperialist ideology and growth-centred relations with other emerging powers inform South African foreign policy, it would be a mistake to see Pretoria's scepticism about Western interpretations as a sign of profound normative convergence with Russian and Chinese critiques of liberal peace-building: the South African critique of the responsibility to protect is more procedural than substantive.