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electoral system. The following section examines Nelson Mandela’s foreign policylegacy as a backdrop to the foreign policy approach of Thabo Mbeki. Next, usingthe categories of ‘institutional freedom’ and ‘legitimating capacity’, the ANC’scapacity for influencing foreign policy is measured. Finally, in the section ‘ResourceMobilisation and Extraction Under Mbeki’, Mbeki’s foreign policy trajectory isexamined in terms of shifts in state power. ‘State power’ has previously beendescribed as “the relative ability of the state to extract or mobilize resources fromdomestic society as determined by the institutions of the state, as well as bynationalism and ideology”. 335The key claim made in this chapter is that while the African National Congressengendered great expectation by way of its liberation movement history, and thewide support it had garnered worldwide in the struggle against apartheid, it was onlyable to implement a foreign policy of measured ambivalence and restraint, given thenature of the highly unequal, and still divided, society it came to govern, in additionto its own capacity limits and the limited resources of the state.5.1. South Africa: A ‘structural’ internationalist?In a contribution to an edited volume on the early years of the presidency of ThaboMbeki, Hein Marais cautions against a rush to ‘periodise’ the post-apartheid era.This is attributable to the importance of the ‘vector…of macroeconomic policy’ inthe transformation, and this has not changed much at all. 336 This observationprompts the broader reflection that South Africa’s foreign policy posture under ademocratic dispensation should not be too readily divorced from historical trends inforeign policy and orientation, apartheid’s worst decades of 1950-1980notwithstanding. This is because South Africa’s material position in the regionaldivision of labour has not changed significantly in the last century. The country isstill the strongest economy in the region, and one of the most attractive destinationsfor foreign investment 337 as well as a major consumer of immigrant labour. Yet, in335 Taliaferro, “State Building for Future Wars”, 467. See also Chapter 3 of current work.336 Hein Marais, “The Logic of Expediency: Post-apartheid shifts in macroeconomicpolicy”, in Thabo Mbeki’s World: The Politics and Ideology of the South AfricanPresident, eds., Sean Jacobs and Richard Calland (Cape Town: Zed Books, 2003): 84.337 In 2009, South Africa was the third-largest recipient of FDI in Africa, with US$ 5.7b,behind Angola (US$13.1b) and Egypt (US$6.7b). African Economic Outlook. “FDI148