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foreign policy. At the same time, the limits imposed by the internationalenvironment, at the regional level and further afield, as perceived by the decision makersshould be taken into account for South Africa’s foreign policy choices in recentyears.This chapter draws on the idea that identities generated at the domestic levelinfluence how states behave internationally, by influencing perceptions of theexternal environment. The key identities generated at the domestic level in SouthAfrica under the African National Congress governments may usefully be dividedinto three categories, according to different levels of analysis, which will bediscussed in subsequent sections.This chapter has as its main objectives an outline of the internationalist position inSouth Africa’s foreign policy, and an analysis of how shifts in state power haveaffected the country’s ambitions in the international realm. A further objective is toanalyse the means by which national resources for foreign policy were mobilisedand extracted during Mbeki’s tenure as president. The temporal focus is thepresidency of Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008), the architect of South African foreignpolicy under the new South African regime, first as the ANC’s Head of Departmentof International Affairs in exile, then as Deputy President under Nelson Mandela(1994-1999), and finally as state president.The chapter is organised as follows: first links will be highlighted between SouthAfrica’s current internationalism and historic internationalist trends in its foreignpolicy. This is done in order to pose the question whether South Africa isgeopolitically predisposed to internationalism in its foreign policy, and to establish acontinuous link spanning apartheid and democratic government. This is done inorder to highlight the deeper structural factors at play in conditioning theinternational perspectives of South Africa’s foreign policymaking elites throughtime. This is followed by an exposition of ANC foreign policy evolution from theorganisation’s time in exile to its assumption of power in South Africa in 1994. Theevolution of ANC foreign policy has faced criticism both from within and outsidethe tripartite alliance (the ANC’s alliance with COSATU and the SACP), with intraallianceopposition proving more significant owing to the nature of South Africa’s147