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a political or material nature, in the context of African initiatives to resolve theconflict. In spite of President Zuma’s personal visit to Qaddafi in May 2011, SouthAfrica squandered a rare opportunity to channel the AU stance on Libya into theeventual UNSC position. Indeed, the text of Resolution 1973 makes scant referenceto the AU at all. The downside of Mbeki’s personalised diplomacy – in spite of thebroader vision it articulated for South Africa’s foreign policy – is thus its subjectivityto the changed political climate.As the chapter on South Africa has illustrated, the country’s foreign policy decisionmakersappear to be stuck in a quandary of both ideational and material capacitydimensions. This situation may be gradually changing with the presentation toParliament of a White Paper on South Africa’s Foreign Policy, “Building a BetterWorld: The Diplomacy of Ubuntu”, in May 2011, the fruit of a two decades-longprocess. 715 The South African state under the ANC has taken more decisive actionon issues that strengthened its political position domestically, and has refrainedfrom involvement on issues that might have threatened its dominance internally.Thus, South Africa’s leadership should be wary of over-cautious irrelevance. It wasrecently embraced by the BRIC formation of states, but many questions – aboutSouth Africa’s economic power, and its relative global presence - abound regardingthe reasoning behind this move.Moving forward from the research framework initiated in the current enquiry couldpose questions relating to bureaucratic and sectoral struggles over foreign policywithin the South African government. The mobilisation and extraction of resourcesfor foreign policy depend both on material capabilities and ideational resources.Greater attention could be paid to South Africa’s structural environment, and thetype of foreign policy behaviour it predicts. The presence of competitor-hegemonssuch as Nigeria, the potential impact of the ‘new’ Egypt, and the ever-increasingpresence of external powers such as China, India, Brazil and Turkey, provideadditional variables for the computation of South Africa’s external threat orvulnerability, all the while mediated by the perceptions of key decision-makers. As isthe case with Brazil, South Africa’s reticent regional hegemony and Africa-first715 Department of International Relations and Co-operation, White Paper on SouthAfrica’s Foreign Policy. 13 May, 2011. Accessed online at:http://www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=148482 on 31 August, 2011.294