The chair of the commission plays a pivotal role in fashioning consensus when stakes are high. It is an executive role that facilitates efficiency in decision making and creating a sense of urgency for implementation. However, it remains unclear what unique contribution SA intends to make through Dlamini-Zuma. There was no thought or vision underpinning SA’s campaign, nor an articulated Legacy that SA wants to imprint on this significant continental body.

In the past, especially under Thabo Mbeki, it was unthinkable for SA to seek positional leadership in the continent’s major structure overtly. SA distinguished itself on the continent by leading through ideas and the art of diplomacy. It understood that positional leadership can be constraining.

The centrepiece of SA’s foreign policy in Africa has always been the pursuit of a consensus-driven mode of decision making, which allowed it to carve a significant space for itself as a trusted power broker and a voice of reason. This also allowed it to exert influence in subtle ways. Because of this, SA commanded respect among its peers. That is now history.

SA’s contest for the AU Commission chair is a sign of a country whose foreign policy is losing direction and suffers a crisis of confidence. That there was no clear rationale behind SA’s campaign for Dlamini-Zuma is disappointing. Running a campaign on regionalist lines, as SA did, serves to accentuate divisions on the continent.

Further, SA’s approach was not connected in any meaningful way to a renewal of its foreign policy approach towards Africa. It revealed little of how the country intends to position its role on the continent differently and offer leadership to help Africa reposition itself in a changing external environment.

Yet the greatest challenge and call for leadership in Africa is to work towards building consensus and sustaining unity. What SA did undermines this. By muscling its way to capture positional leadership, SA is essentially abdicating a substantive leadership role that requires clarity of purpose, ideas and selling a framework of continental unity and progress that other countries can buy into. It is now left to other regional powers, such as Nigeria and Kenya, to fill the vacuum.

SA’s insistence on usurping positional leadership could generate two counterproductive outcomes. The first is that the country might be called upon to provide financial resources, especially to offer more support in conflict areas as well as to finance other programmes of the AU.

It could be argued that this is a cost any major economy that sets itself up for a continental leadership role should shoulder. However, in this case, SA lacks a clear roadmap of the direction the continent should take.

Its campaign was purely interested in replacing a West African faction with a Southern African faction. It is therefore unlikely to use the AU post to create meaningful change in how the body functions.

Quite apart from the fact that this could be a drain on the country’s resources in the face of our own complex economic challenges, it will also not help to address the fundamental weaknesses that are to do with a lack of political will and leadership in the AU. If Dlamini-Zuma fails to register meaningful success in the five years at the helm of the AU, it will be harder for SA to regain the respect of other countries on the continent.

Contesting the AU Commission chair may turn out to be one of the biggest blunders in SA’s foreign policy. Further, it could scupper any effort in the future for SA to rally the continent behind its interests in other multilateral bodies, for example, gaining a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

While it is important for SA to play a leadership role in Africa, this needs to be well thought through and meaningful. Given its obvious political and economic weight, SA does not need positional leadership to have an effect. It should generate capacities to lead through the force of its ideas and its diplomatic capital.

Opting for positional leadership is a sure path to failure, as other countries may be uncooperative, making it harder for Dlamini-Zuma to make strides in the AU. This could also constrain SA’s ability to shape the substance of the AU’s decision-making processes in the future. In the long run, this could damage the country’s diplomatic credibility on the continent.

This article appeared in Business Day of 27 July 2012