South Africa's post-apartheid foreign policy five years on - From Pariah state to 'just another country'?

Former South African president Nelson Mandela was consistently used as a tool of the Pretoria government's foreign relations. Despite Mandela's moral stature there are limits to the portrayal of South Africa as something special, rather than just another country. There have been failures as well as successes and a pursuit of issues that secure international respectability rather than embody the ethos of the Rainbow Nation. The authors contrast how water or housing policies in South Africa are discussed in the context of their effect on the poor while foreign policy is divorced from such popular considerations.