The politics of foreign policy execution: consistency and inconsistency in Kenya’s Foreign Policy towards South Africa - 1978 to 1992

Abstract

This thesis examines the nature of Kenya’s foreign policy towards South Africa. The premise of our investigation is that despite public declarations calling for sanctions against and diplomatic isolation of South Africa, Kenya continued to pursue economic and political interactions with the latter at a covert level.

It is on this premise of policy ambivalence that we analyze the existence of consistency and inconsistency in Kenya's foreign policy towards South Africa. Specifically, this thesis seeks to account for this disparity between policy declarations and practice in the period between 1978 and 1990, and the emergent consistency in foreign policy and practice in the period after the last quarter of 1990.

We co-vary economic and political interactions between Kenya and South Africa with public statements by Kenyan leaders within Kenya and in the international fora. Our observations from this co-variation is that there existed inconsistency in Kenya's foreign policy towards South Africa at the level of policy implementation and practice.

We identify economic and political interests, as sources that undergirded inconsistency and argue that, pursuance and furtherance of these interests, generated inconsistency in Kenya's foreign policy towards South Africa. These interests are defined using the national interest variant of the power theory. We observe that the government attempted to reconcile the pragmatic pursuit of national interests, with the moral principle opposed to the apartheid system, resident at the domestic, regional and international level. The emergent consequence was the pursuit of her interests at a covert level.

Kenya's decision to abandon the continental alliance arraigned against South Africa in the last quarter of 1990, in preference to regularization of relations with the latter is equally examined and analyzed.

We contend that the shift in Kenya's foreign policy towards South Africa from a covert to an overt plane in the last quarter of 1990, was a function of the collapse of apartheid, external pressure and internal political and economic crises in Kenya. We equally note that this process generated consistency in Kenya's foreign policy towards South Africa.

Broadly, this thesis elucidates on the primacy of national interests in dictating the nature of Kenya's foreign policy towards South Africa. We content that Kenya viewed pursuit of economic, geo-strategic and political interests with South Africa as important to her national interests. The centrality of these interests superseded moral principles ensconced in a continental alliance arraigned against South Africa.

National interest, it is noted, is elite defined and dominated. Specifically, we argued that the politics of foreign policy execution is such that when elite interests are at variance with the general interests of the body politic, elite interests tend to be pursued at a covert level. The net effect of this is inconsistency in foreign policy.