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Thabo Mbeki was frequently lampooned in the press for being a ‘foreign policypresident’ or ‘absentee president’, and indeed was widely seen as being more adeptat dealing with foreign affairs than with domestic issues. While this criticism wasoften justified, it missed a valuable point about Mbeki. In the aftermath of theMandela presidency, and the deep affective and ideological resources Mandela hadaccess to, Mbeki succeeded in articulating a broad, and possibly more sustainable,vision for South African foreign policy, and much of his early presidency was spentpublicising, and cultivating support for, this vision. The merits of his ideas, as wellas those of his approach, along with their personal and institutional underpinnings,have been debated at length, 400 but these ideas contributed substantially to theformation of a distinct South African state identity. Mbeki’s personal andpresidential diplomacy were infused with the ideas of race, African nationalism, andwhat some have termed “racial nativism”, “an idea that the true custodians ofAfrican culture are the natives”. 401 These ideas coloured key decisionmakers’ viewsof South Africa and its place in the world.Mbeki’s ideas about Africa’s insertion as an active player in international affairs,which gave rise to his African Renaissance project, have also been linked to themore imprecise idea of personal, national and continental ‘self-determination’. 402The African Renaissance had three aims: to prove Africans’ ability to governdemocratically; to assert the value of African-ness; and, to restore African agency tothe decisions over its destiny, for example in the resolution of conflicts (‘Africansolutions to African problems’) and in the cultivation of the economic conditionsfor prosperity.These notions informed the implementation of foreign policy at the departmentallevel, as Dr Manelisi Genge, Head of the Policy, Research and Analysis Unit in theDepartment from 2002 to 2008, affirmed. He noted that under Mbeki ‘colonialism’400 See, for example, Xolela Mangcu, To the Brink: The State of Democracy in SouthAfrica (Scottsville: University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal Press, 2008); Sean Jacobs and RichardCalland, eds., Thabo Mbeki’s World: The Politics and Ideology of the South AfricanPresident (Cape Town: Zed Books, 2003); William Gumede, Thabo Mbeki and the Battlefor the Soul of the ANC (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2007).401 Mangcu, To the Brink, 2.402 Mark Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball,2007).170