SA’s naval drill was not about taking sides

RECENT media commentary on South Africa’s participation in a joint naval exercise with China, Russia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates has been marked by a familiar charge: that Pretoria has compromised its professed nonaligned stance and, in doing so, damaged the credibility of its foreign policy.

- NONHLANHLA NDLOVU

SOUTH Africa's recent naval exercise with BRICS partners should be seen for what it is: a legitimate exercise of sovereignty in a contested, multipolar world, says the writer. | AFP

(AFP)

Some critics have gone further, implying that South Africa has crossed an ideological and moral red line simply by engaging in defence cooperation outside the orbit of Western powers.

This line of argument is not only flawed, it rests on a deeply impoverished understanding of nonalignment, sovereignty and the realities of an international system that is undergoing profound structural change.

At the most basic level, South Africa is a sovereign state. Like all sovereign states, it possesses the legal and political right to determine its own defence relationships and international partnerships. That right is not conditional on the approval of external actors, nor is it circumscribed by the preferences of global powers that continue to view the world through the lens of bloc politics. To suggest otherwise is to deny South Africa the very agency that nonalignment seeks to preserve.

Nonalignment has never meant abstention from international engagement. Historically, the Non-Aligned Movement emerged not as a doctrine of passivity, but as an assertion of strategic autonomy by states unwilling to subordinate their interests to Cold War power blocs. Its founding principle was independence of judgement, the freedom to engage broadly, selectively and pragmatically in pursuit of national interests. Reducing nonalignment to a prohibition on cooperation with certain countries, while treating engagement with others as unproblematic, turns the concept on its head.