South Africa in Global Development Fora: Cooperation and Contestation

Abstract Since 1994, post-apartheid South Africa has embraced its Southern and African identity, with its foreign policy reflecting its aim to engage in international fora to advance Southern principles and the African voice. It also developed instruments to undertake South-South cooperation that focused largely on sharing its own lessons from its political transformation with post-conflict countries. This chapter explores the tensions between cooperation and contestation in South Africa’s involvement in global development and in its own development cooperation. South Africa has worked on global reforms with large emerging powers, but their interests are not always aligned with those of Africa. South Africa and Africa have derived leverage from their numbers and the related legitimacy in selecting what initiatives of more influential actors they will support.