The Strategic Goals of the Jacob Zuma Government’s Foreign Policy: A Retrospective Assessment

As South Africa reached the abrupt, yet predictable, end of the second term of the Jacob Zuma-led government following the ANC’s Congress in Nasrec Johannesburg in December 2017, two years hence provides an opportune time to unpack and understand some of the policy trajectories, and analyse the policy courses of this former administration. In this policy essay, we shall do an appraisal of this government’s foreign policy and unpack the foreign policy priorities and strategic objectives of the new Jacob Zuma-lead administration, placing emphasison assessment of the foreign largely economic interest driven policy agenda or dominant diplomatic priorities of that government. The questions are therefore most interested in a simple yet cardinal question: what were the major strategic political and economic priorities of the Zuma government?