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international orientation. Most of these accounts, in documenting South Africa’sincreased international engagement since 1994, make the mistake of equating thisactivism with a role for South Africa as a ‘force for good’ in international society.Heightened engagement in international institutions is then held up as a standardagainst which South African foreign policy’s ethical outcomes are judged. 333 This isnot only to confuse cause and effect, but also to conflate two parallel, but notnecessarily related, processes. Increased engagement in multilateral organisationsand the signing of international agreements, while they serve to underwrite theexisting normative international order, do not preclude self-interest on the part ofan international actor. There exist a number of plausible reasons, often – but notexclusively - rooted in domestic politics, why a state would enmesh itself to a lesseror greater extent in international regimes. This observation calls into question anoptic that has often been used in attempts to describe South Africa’s internationalre-integration: that of the uncomplicated diffusion of liberal values.This assumption acted as the backbone of critiques in the literature that viewedSouth African foreign policy as a failure in relation to liberal values propagated byWestern states. Indeed, these values – such as respect for human rights - wereincorporated within the country’s own renowned constitution, and the foreignpolicy statements of all governments since 1994, not to mention statements oncontinental governance that it has assisted in drafting. 334 This notwithstanding, notenough attention has been paid to how decision makers perceive their environment,and to what extent they are able to extract resources for the implementation of theirpreferred foreign policy: the central questions of foreign policy analysis. Thischapter makes an argument for the return of the state to analyses of South Africanforeign policy, incorporating the insight of perception as generated by keypolicymakers. The claim is made that the worldviews and interests of the governingparty and its key members, form a central component of the perceptual lensthrough which foreign policy strategy is determined; and, that changes to theforeign policymaking process under President Thabo Mbeki greatly enhanced theextent to which the state was theoretically able to extract resources for its preferred333 For an example of analyses committing this error, see: Merle Lipton,” UnderstandingSouth Africa’s foreign policy: the perplexing case of Zimbabwe”, South African Journal ofInternational Affairs,16, No.3 (2009).334 See, for example, the Constitutive Act of the African Union, 2000.146