Bhaso Ndzendze

7 January 2026

When US President Donald Trump declared that his administration would run Venezuela for the purposes of extracting its oil to benefit American companies, he was using language similar to that of his new high-profile prisoner, former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Just two years prior to his own illegal capture, Maduro had been eagerly taking steps towards the apparent annexation of his smaller neighbouring country, Guyana. The specific region he wanted was Essequibo, which represents about two-thirds of the Guyanese territory. The area is also Guyana’s lifeline to economic development, having confirmed oil reserves worth 11 billion barrels there in 2015. This places the country among the top 18 countries when ranked by reserves (just behind Algeria and ahead of notable producers such as Norway, Angola, and Mexico). Production is expected to reach 1.2 million barrels per day in 2030. The region is also rich in gold and copper. Most importantly, it is home to some 120,000 Guyanese citizens, or about 15 per cent of its total 800,000 population.

For a man who is now being defended through the deployment of international law arguments, Mr Maduro himself showed consistent disdain for it, at least on the question of Essequibo. He did not adhere to the doctrine of uti possidetis iuris (the principle that colonial borders are to be administered as they have been inherited, lest they cause upheaval and conflict) when he dismissed an 1899 ruling by international arbitrators that set the current boundaries between Venezuela and Guyana. In this regard, he was not the first Venezuelan leader to do so. Caracas has long claimed the territory, going as far back as 1811 when it gained its own independence from Spain. However, Maduro was a standout figure in politicising and escalating the dispute, both domestically and externally, particularly after the discovery of oil there.

In 2018, the small nation of Guyana approached the International Court of Justice for the dispute to be settled. While the decision is still pending, the Venezuelan president made clear that he would not adhere to the outcome if it did not favour his side. Instead, on 3 December 2023, he organised a referendum in which the Venezuelan population was asked five related questions on Essequibo, or Esequiba in Spanish. One of these was “Do you agree with Venezuela’s historical position of not recognizing the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice to resolve the territorial controversy over Guayana Esequiba?”

Another question was “Do you agree with the creation of the Guayana Esequiba state and the development of an accelerated plan for comprehensive care for the current and future population of that territory, which includes, among others, the granting of citizenship and identity card? Venezuela, in accordance with the Geneva Agreement and International Law, consequently incorporating said state on the map of Venezuelan territory?”

The Geneva Agreement referred to here, along with vague “International Law,” was a 17 February 1966 treaty that set up, on the eve of British Guyana’s independence, a commission to review the boundary and make recommendations regarding the disputed territories. At best, this shows a selective approach to international law.

All motions passed with a minimum of 96% according to the official results, which reflected a 51% turnout.

Guyana described the move as a clear “existential threat.”

President Maduro upped the ante on the 5th of December when he unveiled a new map of Venezuela to legislators, which included the disputed territory. He also said the map would be distributed throughout all schools and public buildings in the country, signed a “presidential decree” creating the ‘High Commission for the Defense of Guayana Esequiba,’ and began stationing troops near the Guyanese border. This created tensions between Maduro and his one-time ally, President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who built up his own military presence along the border with Venezuela.

Following a 14 December 2023 summit between President Maduro and his Guyanese counterpart, President Irfaan Ali, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a joint declaration was issued, with each side stating its position. In Article 4, Guyana asserted its view that the dispute should be resolved by the ICJ, while Venezuela expressed its “lack of consent and lack of recognition of the International Court of Justice and its jurisdiction in the border controversy.” This may as well be termed the ‘Maduro Doctrine.’ It rivals his American adversaries in its self-perceived exceptionalism.

When facing down a smaller nation, Maduro was quick to jettison established international law. He may have not gone as far as Trump, but he did contribute, in no insignificant way, to the erosion of the principles which will now be used to defend him: sovereignty and respect for the territorial integrity of other states.

There are hardly any perfect victims in international politics, and Maduro certainly is not one. But do any of his threats and acts towards Guyana justify the actions taken by the US against him? Absolutely not. One of the fundamental purposes of law, domestic and international, is the equal protection of all; that includes even those who disregard it.

Bhaso Ndzendze

5 January 2025

The recent US capture of Venezuela’s incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro, was not the first violation of international law in our times. The actions were, however, a highly visible and traumatising iteration, particularly for the implications they carry and the future they portend. They were an innovation on an old phenomenon: of the powerful doing as they will, and the weaker enduring what they must. The episode is a harsh reminder that sovereignty was only introduced as a response to military stalemate. States can enjoy sovereignty to the extent that they can keep it.

Westphalian sovereignty and battlefield stalemate

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Simplistically, as every student of political science has been taught in their first year, the concept of modern sovereignty that has defined international relations for the past four hundred years stems from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and its affiliated treaties. It came in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War, which began in 1618 and ended with insurmountable stalemate.

The dominant issue was religion. Having undergone the Protestant Reformation following Martin Luther’s 1517 break with the Catholic Church, a century later, Europe’s states – the Catholic Holy Roman Empire and north/western European Protestant kingdoms on the other – clashed with their neighbours over which version of their shared faith, Christianity, would define the continent henceforth. It was also defined by territorial ambitions and dynastic competition, as seen by Catholic French assistance to Protestant Netherlands and Sweden, to prevent their fellow Catholic Habsburgs from dominating both Western and Central Europe.

The conflict was so prolonged, violent, and costly that the European powers ultimately decided that each state should simply follow the religion of its sovereign (that is, its king, emperor, or some other type of ruler). Battles often yielded heavy casualties with little strategic gain. The deadlock was secured by the formal entry of France in 1635. In total, up to 8 million lives, or over 10 per cent of the Western European population, had perished at a civilian casualty ratio of 7:1 against soldiers.

Negotiations began in late 1641 and culminated in the signing of two treaties in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück in 1648. The choice of these two places was itself a subject of compromise. Münster was exclusively Catholic, and Osnabrück was governed by a Protestant city council.

In its preamble, the former treaty referred to the conflict as “a long and cruel War.” It provided, in Article 64, that “…to prevent for the future any Differences arising in the Politick State, all and every one of the Electors, Princes and States of the Roman Empire, are so establish’d and confirm’d in their antient Rights, Prerogatives, Libertys, Privileges, free exercise of Territorial Right, as well Ecclesiastick, as Politick Lordships, Regales, by virtue of this present Transaction.”

From the onset, sovereignty was tied to rulership, out of conditions of stalemate and compromise. States could hope to enjoy sovereignty to the extent that their leaders could defend it. Poland’s kings, put in power by elections and held to account by a Parliament (Sejm) in which every member held a veto, could not raise an army to defend their country, and it was subjected to partition by Austria, Russia, and Prussia between 1772 and 1795, and it ceased to exist on the European map. It was in years in-between, in 1787, that the United States embarked on rewriting its Articles of Confederation in order to forge a stronger central government that could withstand external and internal threats. The result was the present-day Constitution of United States. At the end of the proceedings, Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading participants in the constitutional convention, was asked by a curious woman whether the result had been a monarchy or a republic, to which he replied “A republic, if you can keep it.” States are not permanent, and both domestic and international laws do not guarantee their existence.

This lesson has come to be forgotten, in part thanks to subsequent innovations invented by liberal institutionalists, most emblematically the League of Nations (1919) and its successor, the United Nations (1945). Yet, as already seen with the Polish partitions, the years between 1648 and 1945, and those since 1945, have seen numerous violations of sovereignty.

In 1806, a new generation of rulers disregarded the old order, led primarily by post-Revolution France: in that year, Napoleon Bonaparte interfered in the internal affairs of the Holy Roman Empire by dissolving it through the Treaty of Pressburg, and establishing an Austria-free Confederate of the Rhine, precursor to modern-day Germany, with himself as its Lord Protector. Decades later, and indeed centuries before, the sovereignty of African and Asian rulers was not even a serious consideration in the establishment of the British ‘Crown Raj’ in India, or the Berlin Conference in 1884-85. The First World War, a global catastrophe that exhausted the major powers on a scale not seen since the Thirty Years’ War, led to the creation of the League of Nations and the establishment of the principle of self-determination for all peoples. These moves extended sovereignty, but even here, there was selective implementation, tied very much to the level of power enjoyed by a given territory’s leader and allies: thus, while Poland was restored, and numerous former territories of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman Empires got their independence, African and East Asian territories were merely swapped around. The reality of “Sovereignty, if you can keep it” was at play. It was at play, too, when the League of Nations stood idly by and watched fascist Italy and Japan annex Ethiopia and northeast China, despite Article X of its Covenant guaranteeing collective retaliation against aggressors. World War II surpassed all prior wars in the number of casualties and exhaustion it generated. The UN Charter was the world’s attempt of learning this lesson and formalising “Never again.” Scores of newly independent states, emerging into a world that claimed subscription to the Charter, entertained briefly the belief that they were sovereign and therefore legally (i.e., hypothetically) equal, regardless of their size (this is still International Relations 101 orthodoxy, even if we teach it with critical caution and caveats). True, all their votes counted the same at the UN General Assembly, though the Security Council, the real engineroom of the UN, had the final say on the things that really mattered.

The war ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany, but it also marked another stalemate: the Cold War. In that era, now secured by nuclear weapons (the ultimate stalemate), the great powers – America and the Soviet Union – did not confront each other directly, but they violated the ostensible sovereignty of the smaller states at every opportunity through coups, assassinations, and proxy wars.

The post-Cold War order gave rise to its own reminders that sovereignty was for those who could keep it: Iraq and Libya failed at the first push in 2003 and 2011. Syria held out before reaching exhaustion in December of 2024. Georgia largely, and surprisingly, prevailed against Russia in 2008, but at the price of two-thirds of its territory. Taliban Afghanistan retreated and then regrouped after a twenty-year’s war against Washington and its allies between 2001 and 2021 that reached its own form of stalemate – military victory but diplomatic isolation for the Taliban; military evacuation but loss of prestige for the US. Ukraine, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are each at their own crossroads in which they must answer the same basic question. Will they be subsumed or, through stalemate, secure their sovereignty and keep it?

Hemoclysm and compromise

The election and return of President Donald Trump, along with equal and opposite ideological hardening in other parts of the globe, are the product and reinforcing variables of a break with the delicate paper guarantees that defined the post-World War II order contained in the United Nations Charter. The generation that bled in the two world wars are gone, and with them the lessons of those conflicts that led to compromise. As with Europe after the French Revolution, a new generation of coalesced forces that were previously on the outer margins of political power seems eager, for various reasons, to do away with the established norms. But they do not agree on what should replace them; as with the pre-Westphalian order, each side thinks the other woefully wrong and in need of conversion or extermination. Indeed they view compromise as tantamount to weakness or elite capture and corruption (despite being decidedly allied with elites themselves). They, of course, are not fully wrong in their diagnoses, even if their remedies are ill-suited to present problems. Inequality levels are growing, with hundreds of millions of people having been written out of economic upward mobility. Climate disaster abounds. Artificial intelligence blurs reality and fiction. Information flows faster than it can be analysed. Energy is being consumed at historic levels. Manufactured scarcity and polarisation are the order of the day, both within and among states. Conflict seems the inescapable outcome.

Yet, inevitably, a few years, decades or another century away from now, stalemate and compromise will prevail in some form – be it one that makes pretensions to equality or one that more blatantly establishes predatory spheres of influence among the great powers. Sadly that will not occur before the world, once again, undergoes another hemoclysm to exhaust itself. It is simply pitiful that so many lives will be lost merely to learn the same lesson.

Bhaso Ndzendze

3 January 2026

As only he can, second-term US President Donald Trump has got the world abuzz with his latest unpredictable manouvre: the reported abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. So has begun 2026 with a rocky start on the global landscape. The act was conducted amid explosions in the capital city of Caracas. It is as brazen as it is illegal under international law.

Yet it is not without historical precedent.

The last two decades have seen the gradual erosion of international norms, and the taboo against leader kidnapping is one of them. In the normal course of events, even the most powerful states have tended to push their target incumbent into fleeing their country and political position, rather than straight-up abducting them. To the best of my knowledge (based on my research for another book 11 years ago), the last time a leader was abducted was all the way in the nineteenth century — long before the establishment of the United Nations Charter, with all its guarantees of sovereignty. In 1809 Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had Pope Pius VII abducted from Rome over quarrels over authority, and kept him in France until 1814, when he lost his own throne (and was himself sent to exile in Elba and then St Helena in 1815). The years since the Afro-Arab Spring have seen numerous heads of state and/or government – i.e., presidents and/or prime ministers – flee from power in Africa and Asia, most recently Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Sheikh Hassina of Bangladesh (2024), to Russia and India respectively, and Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar (2025), to France. All of these were induced by popular protests or, in the case of Syria, a successful insurgency. Several other heads of state have fled their countries following coups in West and Central Africa since 2020.

Ivory Coast and Lebanese Precedents?

The most recent cases which meet the criteria of the abduction of an incumbent in modern international affairs have occured in Africa and the Middle East: President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast in 2010, and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (2017). The former was de facto abducted (along with his wife, like Mr Maduro) by being placed under conditions of arrest by the International Criminal Court, in an operation led by the French military, and taken to The Hague. He was eventually granted an acquittal in 2021 against accusations of inciting violence following his country’s 2010 elections which he lost.

The second incident was even more strange and may be the closest parallel to the current situation. At the height of the Iran-Saudi proxy conflict, in November 2017 the Lebanese prime minister was in Saudi Arabia when he was broadcast resigning from his position, in what were widely regarded as coercive circumstances. Prime ministers usually resign in their home countries, not during foreign trips. He eventually returned to his country, where he rescinded the resignation. The country also has a seperate head of state (President Michel Aoun at the time), which closed space and prevented the potential vacuum and chaos likely to emerge in Venezuela in coming weeks.

The Venezualian Precedent is Different

At a time when inter-state tensions and disputes are reemerging (a trend to which Maduro has himself contributed through his aggressive policy towards small, oil-rich neighbouring Guyana), and international institutions and norms are at their weakest, the abduction of Maduro could set a precedent far more significant than the Ivorian and Lebanese cases. Firstly, the two were carried out either under the guise (or pretext) of international law (the enforcement of electoral outcomes in Ivory Coast), or were impermanent (Hariri was eventually reinstated as prime minister of Lebanon). Secondly, they were conducted by less symbolically powerful states. While the US has been gradually losing its once-idealised image of being the world’s moral superpower, the country still holds considerable moral weight, even among those who abhor its current administration.

It is as true as it is ironic: the world’s opinion on what is acceptable or not still flows downstream from the US. With this recent operation, we can expect a more lawless world in which presidents are abducted in the dark of night in pursuit of geopolitical goals. States may soon come to the conclusion that – on the basis of the US example – it is better, and more cost-effective, to simply kidnap an opposing regime rather than spend time and resources defeating them through diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, and even battlefield outcomes.

Bhaso Ndzendze

22 November 2025

The G20 Leaders’ Declaration was adopted on the 22nd of November 2025, in the opening plenary session chaired by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Among the issues covered by the document are the mainstay of international relations, inclduing on conflict, terrorism, debt sustainability, and critical raw minerals. However, for those in my sector, it also has a focus on education (covering both basic and higher education), emphasising the importance of ever-shifting twenty-first century skills and the strained conditions under which educators have to work, and the impact of resources:

We recognise that developing education professionals for the 21st century involves integrating educators’ abilities to equip learners for an evolving society. We support greater recognition of the teaching profession, as a way to curb teacher shortages, especially in early and basic education. We emphasise the necessity to equip educators with appropriate pedagogies towards the 2030 core skills while also addressing issues related to inclusive digital access, technology infrastructure and connectivity, to overcome the digital divides for all.

Additionally, it is cognisant of the internationalisation of higher education:

We support enhanced implementation and cohesion of existing regional conventions on the recognition of qualifications, as well as the UNESCO Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education, and promoting cooperation among signatory countries, and processes facilitated through the 2025-27 Global Convention work programme where appropriate and subject to national or domestic standards, frameworks and processes.

While not initiating anything specifically new, the language is encouraging and the 2025-27 Global Convention will enable further harmonization of standards and move the world closer to a fully integrated higher education system; one in which students and institutions do not have lose so much time and resources validating qualifications.

Bhaso Ndzendze

14 November 2025

A look at South Africa’s exports of books and newspapers makes for an optimistic read and shows some market resilience (at least at the macro level) even in this digital era.

But what are books and newspapers?

Under its Harmonized System (HS), the World Trade Organization (WTO) classifies all products under any one of 99 chapters, broadly based on their level of manufacturing input and complexity. Thus, for example, live animals are coded under Chapter 1, while vehicles and auto parts are under Chapter 87. Books and newspapers are coded under Chapter 49 in the HS. They include products such as printed books, newspapers, pictures and other products of the printing industry, manuscripts, and typescripts. Within Chapter 49, Heading 4901 is for printed books and Heading 4902 for newspapers, journals, and periodicals.

What the data shows

The data from SARS and the United Nations Trademap shows that South Africa exports more books and related products than it imports. The latest available data points to a balance of trade of R617.05-million in 2024 for books (from R374.36-million a decade earlier), and R133.02-million for newspapers in that same year (compared to R98.92-million ten years prior).

Table 1. South African newspaper exports, in millions of ZAR.

Years	Total exports	Exports to Africa	Imports	Balance of trade
2014	93.04	91.21	0.25	90.96
2015	142.84	140.94	1.11	139.82
2016	120.01	117.62	1.61	116.01
2017	124.17	107.50	1.67	105.83
2018	157.83	142.72	0.27	142.44
2019	123.50	121.52	0.12	121.39
2020	72.43	71.40	0.14	71.25
2021	84.95	84.65	0.13	84.52
2022	121.52	120.50	0.08	120.42
2023	124.94	122.77	0.33	122.44
2024	135.88	133.09	0.07	133.02

Source: Author, data from United Nations Trademap.

Table 2. South African book trade (including brochures), in millions of ZAR.

Years	Total exports	Exports to Africa	Imports	Balance of trade
2014	625.94	575.62	201.26	374.36
2015	719.28	657.45	187.77	469.68
2016	774.79	693.72	193.92	499.80
2017	619.70	558.00	158.51	399.49
2018	796.41	751.55	175.54	576.00
2019	728.71	674.34	114.899	559.44
2020	1092.31	1038.83	75.24	963.58
2021	482.33	440.33	110.39	329.93
2022	657.69	536.78	99.90	436.88
2023	759.45	696.93	98.79	598.13
2024	798.84	711.74	94.6	617.05

Source: Author, data from United Nations Trademap.

Room for growth

Books and newspapers constitute only 0.14% of South Africa’s exports to Africa, and 0.011% of GDP. South Africa exports its books and newspapers mostly to Africa, more than to any other region. In 2024, Africa represented 89.09% of South Africa’s book export market and 97.94% for newspapers. The country’s potential, including market diversification outside the continent and the SADC region, still has considerable room for growth.

Bhaso Ndzendze

13 November 2025

The Sixth Global Internationalisation Survey conducted by the International Association of Universities (IAU), finds that an increase in “global, international and intercultural knowledge, skills and competences for both students and staff” ranks #2 among the list of institutional benefits of internationalisation for universities around the globe. This is the concept of global citizenship education (GCE). However the idea is open-ended and abstract — and so is subject to debate.

In a new article titled ‘Global citizenship education and the internationalisation of higher education: Critical perspectives from South Africa,’ published by the International Review of Education, Samia Chasi (Rhodes University) and Savo Heleta (Nelson Mandela University) adopt a critical and decolonial approach to GCE. In particular, they take issue with the emergence of this concept in a global structure still defined by global North and Eurocentric dominance in the production of knowledge. In order to put forward a new definition of higher education internationalisation, they draw first from critical diversity learning (CDL), a framework developed in South Africa. They utilise Melissa Steyn’s (2015) ten criteria for CDL:

1. Understanding the role of power in constructing differences that make a difference

2. Recognising the unequal symbolic and material value of different social locations;

3. Having the analytic skill to unpack how systems of oppression intersect, coconstruct and constitute each other, and how they can be reproduced, resisted and reframed;

4. Defining oppressive systems such as racism as current social problems and not only a historical legacy;

5. Understanding that social identities are learned and are an outcome of social practices;

6. Possessing the vocabulary to facilitate discussions of privilege and oppression;

7. Being able to interpret coded hegemonic practices;

8. Analysing the ways in which diversity hierarchies and institutionalised oppressions are inflected through specific social contexts and material arrangements;

9. Understanding the role of emotions, including our own, in all of the above;

10. Working to transform oppressive systems and deepen social justice at all levels of society.

They conclude that the above criteria “can help students critically read, confront and engage with a complex and ever-changing world.”

Overall the article is quite comprehensive and builds on scholarship. A more concise definition of internationalisation -which is what the abstract promises – is hard to come by in the text. But reading between the lines we can conclude that their definition of internationalisation is normative global engagement. By this I mean that their work highlights the important and unique role of South Africa as a historic site and contemporary actor, which compels it to be an advocate of critical global engagement. That is, the point is not merely to engage with the world, but to change it ever so slightly for the better. My own experience – and more importantly the White Paper on Higher Education Internationalisation – cohere with this, given the emphasis on equitable partnerships.

Bhaso Ndzendze

12 November 2025

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali (1931). Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Lately I have been confronted with the thought that International Relations (IR) theory is essentially interpretive history, the thematic telling of history, based on the writer’s analysis of the most important trends of their subject. By aspiring to produce generalizable accounts of state behavior, IR scholars participate in the same effort. This is why political science – of which IR is a specialization – may be considered the final draft of history. But in their focus on the major themes, scholars (particularly those working within the Realist paradigm) have tended to focus on the most impactful actors – these tending to be the most powerful states. In so doing, they neglect the smaller states, which constitute the majority of the world.

But does resolving that problem pose a new one?

In a brilliant new article in the European Journal of International Relations (6 November 2025), Arjun Chowdhury (University of British Columbia, Canada) and Miles M. Evers (University of Connecticut, US) titled ‘Anachronism and International Relations theory‘ confront the problem of history and time in a unique problem of modern IR theory; the well-intentioned tendency to superimpose contemporary outlooks and concepts in bygone eras in an attempt to broaden geographical and historical representation (truly global history, and not just those of North America and Western Europe).

Making use of historical methods, archival sciences, and the philosophy of history, they argue that “two retrospective processes—information-destroying, which shapes what is preserved, and information-obscuring, which governs how that information is organized—flatten ideational variation in the historical record and distort the evidentiary foundations on which scholars depend for testing and building theories of world politics.” They term this structural anachronism.

Some examples they cite include studies of war such as Miller and Bakar’s (2023) conflict-event dataset, Kang’s
(2010) account of the Confucian long peace, and Phillips’ (2021) analysis of imperial diversity regimes, which, they assert, “draw on selective sources that elevate some conflicts over others and use ideal types that impose coherence on episodes.” They also critique accounts of order such as Butcher and Griffiths (2017) on precolonial systems, Spruyt (2020) on regional worldviews, and Zarakol (2022) on Chinggisid sovereignty, whom they find to “rely on retrospective sources that reframe political diversity through modern traditions and categories like sovereignty.”

Is the problem of structural anarchism better than the alternative? I think it is. Given that the other problem is essentially erasure, the potentially inaccurate representation of non-Western pasts in modern IR theory can be surmountable by incremental correction. Indeed it can only come into the fore of IR theory in that way, much as ever-new theories have emerged by being correctives to prior efforts. The authors themselves argue as much, acknowledging that all of historical writing is bound to participate in some level of structural anachronism.

21 October 2024

My latest book, Super President: The History and Future of Executive Power in South Africa, has been published by the University of Johannesburg Press (UJ Press).

Read more about the book below and get yourself the open access ebook or paperback copy.

Bhaso Ndzendze

10 August 2024

Botswana has introduced a new ban on imports of citrus products from South Africa. As reported by Business Day, the move is intended to boost domestic production in the 2-million population nation, which has been battling new competition from lab-grown diamonds against its second-most prosperous export. In an election year, the pressures on the government are intense to provide a growing economy, or at least to introduce policies to make it seem so.

Botswana has imposed yet another ban on agricultural imports from SA, this time on oranges. Effective from June 17 to the end of August, the temporary ban has been enforced by Botswana’s agriculture ministry to support local farmers and stabilise the market. The move is part of a broader strategy aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in food production, a goal that has seen Botswana extend and expand restrictions on various fresh produce imports until the end of 2025. Their ministry urged businesses to source oranges locally from the Tuli Block, emphasising the importance of sustaining Botswana’s agricultural sector. Authorities have been tasked with closely monitoring the production situation to ensure the initiative’s success.

— Business Day, 6 August 2024

A look at the two-way trade between the two countries demonstrates that South Africa is indeed a dominant exporter to Botswana. Since 2019, exports have nearly doubled from R33-million to now R51.922-million according to the latest annual data (2023).

The picture becomes clearer when we consider that South Africa is the principal exporter to Botswana. The data below depicts the advantage enjoyed by South Africa, which accounts for more than 90% of all citrus products imported by Botswana. This makes South Africa an obvious target for Gaborone’s government.

Not only have exports to Botswana been growing in monetary terms, but in actual quantities too.

Yet Botswana is also a dominant trading partner when compared to South Africa in terms of livestock trade, enjoying about a billion rand gap in any given year since 2021. This should come as no surpise, as livestock have emerged as the country’s leading export, with about three catttle for every one human being in the country.

Nevertheless, the pressures on the Botswana economy are difficult and threaten the very stability of one of the continent’s stablest and most prosperous nation. South Africa can afford to take a knock on its citrus exports, for now, and ought to boost its subsidies for its farmers while engaging Botswana on how to support their transition from a diamond-centred economy. In the long-term, a European Union style common agricultural policy (CAP) programme, within the context of SACU, would be a safety-net for producers at a microeconomic level while also ensuring common prosperity at a macroeconomic scale.

25 July 2024

I participated on a panel on thirty years of South Africa’s democratic foreign policy, alongside Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition Deputy Director-General Lerato Mataboge and Department of International Relations and Cooperation Director-General Zane Dangor.

Some of the points I raised were that:

• South Africa’s foreign policy is undermined by a weak military and socio-economic challenges at home. Nor does the country have any clear international existential threats, most of them emanate from within. This leads to a watered down version of foreign policy than traditionally understood.
• South Africa’s foreign policy “red lines” are not established as a result.
• Additionally, South Africa’s position on Palestine and Ukraine are inconsistent with one another. This undermines South Africa’s voice, which is crucial for a non-military and non-economic power. Instead South Africa has sought to “cosplay realism” on behalf of other states such as Russia, who are not South Africa’s allies, putting the country in an awkward position.
• There has been too much decentralisation over the decades when it comes to the making of foreign policy, evident in the fact that the minister of international relations and cooperation is expected only to “coordinate” and not lead foreign policy.
• The presence of a South African judge in the International Court of Justice (IJC) does not present a foreign policy lever, nor should it. All ICJ judges, and all officials of the UN System, should be neutral. The extent of Judge Tladi’s flying of the “South African flag” should begin and end with his jurisprudence, which may or may not have uniquely South African or African underpinnings and manifestations.

Photographs courtesy of The Visual Studio.