Reconfiguring South Africa's foreign policy

A Negritude analysis from non-alignment to BRICS

- ITUMELENG MOTHOAGAE

SOUTH Africa's foreign policy configuration since the twilight of apartheid has been characterised by an evolving commitment to “active nonalignment” and an increasingly strategic engagement within the BRICS coalition.

Popular analytical frameworks predominantly interpret such shifts in terms of geopolitical pragmatism or economic strategy aimed at positioning South Africa favourably within the global order. However, to grasp the full intellectual and normative import of South Africa's international orientation, it is critical to engage with the more profound philosophical legacies that inform this policy. A Negritude-inflected reading reveals South Africa’s foreign policy as an affirmation of African agency and decolonial sovereignty, an extension of the liberation project, and a rejection of the Eurocentric structures that have historically circumscribed African participation in global governance.

At the core of this reading is the recognition of Negritude as a foundational intellectual tradition that insists on the affirmation and valorisation of Black identity, culture, and political self-determination. Pioneered principally by Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor, Negritude offers a counter-discourse to European cultural imperialism and the political marginalisation of Africa and the African diaspora. When applied to South Africa's foreign policy stance, particularly the policy of “active nonalignment,’ the principles of Negritude acquire practical and geopolitical expression. This policy articulates a refusal to be positioned as a pawn in post-Cold War power rivalries that often echo the paternalistic and exploitative tendencies of earlier colonial interventions. Instead, it represents a conscious political disposition designed to reclaim South Africa's diplomatic agency and to foreground an African-centred worldview that prioritises sovereignty and solidarity among the Global South.