Argentina-And-South-Africa.Pdf

1 2 Argentina and South Africa facing the challenges of the XXI Century Brazil as the mirror image 3 4 Argentina and South Africa facing the challenges of the XXI Century Brazil as the mirror image Gladys Lechini 5 Lechini, Gladys Argentina and South Africa facing the challenges of the XXI Century: Brazil as the mirror image. 1a ed. Rosario: UNR Editora. Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario, 2011. 300 p. ; 23x16 cm. ISBN 978-950-673-920-1 1. Política Económica. I. Título CDD 320.6 Diseño de tapa y diseño interior UNR Editora ISBN 978-950-673-920-1 © Gladys Lechini. 2011 IMPRESO EN LA ARGENTINA - PRINTED IN ARGENTINA UNR EDITORA - EDITORIAL DE LA UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE ROSARIO SECRETARÍA DE EXTENSIÓN UNIVERSITARIA 6 To my son and daughter, Ramiro and Jimena, for their patience and love To Edgardo, my companion along this journey, for his love, support and understanding To my parents, for creating a comfortable environment to be myself. 7 8 Contents Acknowledgements | 11 Prologue | 13 Dedicatory | 15 Introduction | 17 Chapter I An Approach to Argentine-African Relations (1960-2000) | 30 Chapter II From Policy Impulses to Policy Outlines (1960-1989) | 52 Chapter III The Politics of No-Policy (1989-1999) | 75 Chapter IV The Mirror Image: Brazil’s African Policy (1960-2000) | 105 Chapter V Argentina and South Africa: Dual Policy and Ambiguous Relations (1960-1983) | 140 Chapter VI Defining the South African Policy: the Alfonsín Administration (1983-1989) | 154 Chapter VII Menem and South Africa: between Presidential Protagonism and the Return to Impulses (1989-1999) | 171 Chapter VIII Brazil’s South African Policy: the Post-1994 Approach and the Results | 189 Chapter IX Argentina and South Africa in the 21st Century; under the shadow of Brazil (2000- 2010) | 215 Conclusions | 251 Bibliography | 259 Acronyms | 276 Tables | 281 9 10 Acknowledgments This book is the result of the revised doctoral dissertation presented at the University of São Paulo, Brazil and updated with a new chapter The main theme of both the book and the dissertation has been the object of long elaboration –at times explicit, at times underlying– which grew all along my life as researcher at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina and as lecturer at Universidad Nacional de Rosario, institutions that contributed to my professional training and which I feel most indebted to. The concern with the unstable and impulsive characteristics of Argentina’s foreign policy constitutes the backdrop to this book, the result of different contributing sources and impulses which arose as years went by and which reflect the different geographical spaces that the successive stages of its elaboration marked. I am indebeted to professors Fernando Augusto Alburquerque Mourao, Luis Beltrán and Jose Maria Nunes Pereira, to my Argentine colleagues and friends from CERIR in Rosario, those from Buenos Aires, from Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil, and from South Africa and Africa, who at different times took the trouble of reading my notes. Their discussions and comments contributed greatly to clarify my doubts. The reason for the above general acknowledgment is due to the fact that after carefully revising the numerous contributions received over all these years, I might be unfair and fail to mention some names. This is also the reason why I can only thank more explicitly the patient work done by Julieta Cortés, Gisela Pereyra Doval and Carla Morasso, who over different periods gave me support during the writing process and helped me with the elaboration of tables and figures. Finally, my thanks to the Government of South Africa –through its embassy in Buenos Aires– to the Argentine-South African Chamber of Commerce and the Standard Bank for their generous financial support for the publication of this English edition. 11 12 Prologue ALTHOUGH THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS has remained little developed in the social sciences of Latin America, the analysis of the different links between the countries in the region and their African counterparts reveals even a more worrying deficit. Since the mid 1990s, the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO) began to encourage initiatives aimed to modify such absence of knowledge between two continents united by significant blood ties and cultural bonds. It was President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva who stated that his country, Brazil, hosted the second African descent group on the planet; the figure, ascending to over eighty million people, is only outnumbered by the population residing in the largest African country, Nigeria. With his words, President Lula reasserted the validity of a historic claim on the part of Brazil, and once again underlined the continuity of the salient lines in the foreign policy of Brazil, in overt contrast with the erratic meandering path exhibited by Argentina. In the mentioned context, the African studies in Latin America and the Caribbean constitute a rare exception. It is within this framework that the publication of Gladys Lechini’s book must be considered; her merits are many and of very diverse kinds. Firstly, she ventured into a very little explored territory such as Argentine - African relations, a contribution that fills a gap concerning not only the ill-famed quality of our academic life but, and more seriously yet, because it unfolds the incoherence and the improvisation prevalent in Argentina’s foreign policy with respect to a continent of the importance of Africa. Secondly, she focused this study from an enriching comparative perspective while establishing a didactic counterpoint between Brazil’s African policy and the series of policies and approaches attempted by Argentina. The writer, a lecturer at Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, a CONICET researcher, and former coordinator for CLACSO’s South- South Program, is one of the most important African Studies analysts of Latin America and the Caribbean; she enjoys a long career in the teaching profession and in research work and possesses personal knowledge of a large part of the African Continent. The book that we are pleased to introduce originated in the doctoral dissertation that Lechini presented at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. The original text has undergone revision and has reached the final updated version the reader is now in capacity to enjoy. 13 This book starts with a general discussion of the Argentine foreign policy, the main feature of which –certainly paradoxical– has been its discontinuity, its persistent unpredictable performance, from the second half of the previous century on, with its traditional erratic fluctuations and its ever hesitant strategy of international insertion. In the short span of a couple of decades, Argentina went from disdaining the Non-Aligned Movement to adhering to it enthusiastically after the Malvinas/Falklands War broke out. Later, it blatantly proclaimed unconditional alignment with the United States of America, in the name of the sadly regrettable doctrine of “carnal relations” with the hegemonic power. Finally, it cautiously returned to the Movement, during Néstor Kirchner Presidency, but as “observer” and not as a full member of the organization. Amid such dizzying succession of changing priorities and reactions, the Africa policy fell prey to the meanderings of the official policy. After the return of democracy and with the ascent of Raúl Alfonsín to power, the relationship with the African countries played a more relevant role on Argentina’s foreign relations agenda. The most prominent feature of this period was, undoubtedly, breaking relations with the racist government of South Africa, which, during the military regime between 1976 and 1983, had enjoyed special treatment. However, the “openness to Africa” by Palacio San Martín, limited to mere diplomatic initiatives and gestures (not solid enough in terms of deeper commercial, political and cultural relations), and the radical reversal in the foreign agenda implemented by Carlos Menem Administration, may be held responsible for the near banishment of the African countries on the Argentine foreign policy agenda. In the current century a policy based almost exclusively on commercial prospects and foreign trade superavit was instrumental to maintain in the foreign policy agenda the relations of Argentina with the North African countries and South Africa Lechini’s book shows the existing contrast with Brazil, a country which, since the 1960s, adopted and maintained a policy of deepening commercial, political and cultural relations with the African countries. Already in the 1990s, in spite of his rhetoric extolling the need to unconditionally side with the United States as a condition to guarantee the “entrance” to the First World, Menem established diplomatic relations with the new De Klerk transition government in South Africa, but neither this nor any of the other African countries were able to draw the attention or the interest of the Casa Rosada. 14 From a historical viewpoint, Lechini demonstrates that the Argentina- South Africa relations started in the 1960s followed three stages. The first one, between 1960 and 1983, when relations responded to sporadic impulses dictated by rather strict commercial interests and, toward the end of this period and in the context of the military regime, for strategic- military reasons. The second stage began when Argentina broke off with the racist Pretoria regime, and was extended over up to 1991, when the Argentine government gave recognition to the new African counterpart; nevertheless, as pointed out by Lechini, such recognition was not enough to substantially modify the approach to South Africa or to the African Continent at large in the eyes of the temporary occupants of Argentina’s Foreign Relations Ministry. Yet, in the last decade bilateral macro relationships experienced an improvement, largely due to the renewed activism of both Argentinean and South African embassies and the creative role of an expanding network of social actors on both sides of the Atlantic that help to keep alive and growing the relations at the micro level.

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