India-South Africa India-South Africa 2019 | Page 35

SPECIAL REPORT
has diverted India’s attention, except for
rhetoric and the use of multilateral forums.
Yet, India’s robust democracy and growing
economic and strategic importance in South
Asia has consolidated its position as a
regional power. India has been more skilful
while using its regional infl uence to achieve
tangible political gains in its relations with
Western powers. Table 2 provides insights
into regional power patterns.
India and South Africa: The Way Ahead:
Strategic Partnering and Reciprocal
Cooperation
While the conditions for regional
leadership may be rooted in a combination of
historical processes, material expressions of
power, and ideational factors in conjunction
with external sources of legitimization,
the picture is more complex than even this
depiction would suggest. Complicating
the relationship between aspirant regional
leaders and their respective geographic
neighbourhood is the role of other emerging
powers external to the region whose ability
to mobilise resources challenges their
presumptions of pre-eminence. For both
countries, the spectacle of China, a global
behemoth with tremendous fi nancial means
at its call, increasingly competitive state-
owned transnational corporations, and an
aggressive strategy of seeking out vital
resources and market share in the pursuit of
its economic needs and exercising its global
reach into their regions raises signifi cant
questions.
Finally, South Africa has seen both
Chinese challenges to South African interests
in Africa as well as collaboration. Chinese
fi rms especially in the area of infrastructure
and selective mining as well as through their
trade in manufactured goods and textiles have
caused formerly dominant South African
fi rms to lose contracts and market share at
an alarming rate. At the same time, some
South African fi rms have been able to adapt
to these conditions. Example: the country’s
leading fi nancial institution. Standard Bank,
sold 20 percent equity stake to China’s largest
bank, the Industrial and Construction Bank
of China, and embarked on a joint strategy
of seeking fi nancial opportunities in the rest
of Africa.
Perhaps as troubling from a South African
perspective was the growing economic
presence of India in what Pretoria regards
as its natural backyard. Since the late 1990s,
both countries have sought out African
resources as part of their overall expansion
in the globalizing economy. Private mining
multinationals like Vedanta took up positions
in Gabon, Zambia, and Mozambique, in some
cases, displacing South African fi rms and, in
others, challenging them. Many more modest
medium and small fi rms, especially from
India, have entered into the fray and been
able to acquire market share in southern and
eastern Africa, sometimes at the expense of
South African interests or putative eff orts
to expand its interests. The implications
of a weakening South African claim to the
trappings of economic dominance, and with
that a concomitant reduction in the infl uence
it is capable of wielding in Africa, has begun
to manifest itself in policy.
The implications
of a weakening
South African claim
to the trappings
of economic
dominance, and with
that a concomitant
reduction in the
infl uence it is
capable of wielding
in Africa, has begun
to manifest itself in
policy.
Diagnostic Perspective
Huntington (1999) uses the concept of
a uni-multi-polar system to describe the
current structure of the international system.
From a realist’s or realistic perspective, a
multi-polar system can only be achieved by
the emergence of regional uni-polarities that
build coalitions to balance the superpower
(Wohlforth 1999). As Nye (2004) argues, real
global uni-polarity requires the hegemony’s
dominance in two additional playing fi elds:
global economics and other transnational
problems such as terrorism, crime, global
warming, and epidemics. As the current
economic crisis demonstrates, transnational
problems can only be resolved through the
cooperation of many players.
India and South Africa have already
demonstrated their ability to advance their
economic goals within the existing order.
‘Binding’ strategies aim to restrain stronger
states through institutional agreements
(Ikenberry & Wright, 2008). Critics of
the soft balancing approach are right in
their argument that other categories such
as economic interest or regional security
concerns are alternative explanations for
second-tier states’ foreign policy behaviour
(Brooks & Wohlforth, 2005). But these
explanations do not exclude each other; they
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