Although SADCC had played a pivotal role in the struggles for majority rule in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa in the 1980s, its successor organization was less significant in the 1990s and 2000s. Member states sometimes promoted opposing strategies. In the DRC, for instance, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe supported the Congolese government militarily, while South Africa attempted to mediate a negotiated solution to the conflict. In 2013, SADC as an entity became more directly involved in the DRC when it joined ICGLR in promoting a regional peace and security framework and contributed soldiers to the UN intervention brigade that was intended to enforce the agreement. South Africa also played an independent role outside SADC and the subregion, helping to broker peace agreements in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan.
Although the political, economic, and military destabilization associated with apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa continued to dominate the subregion and played a growing role on the continent and in the global arena. South African mining, construction, retail, and media and telecommunications companies invested heavily in the Southern African subregion and across the continent. Pretoria’s economic clout was accompanied by growing political influence. After apartheid’s demise, South Africa became the unofficial African voice in key international organizations. It played a prominent role in organizations that promote alternative visions in the Global South, including the AU, in which it was a prime mover, the Non-Aligned Movement, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and BRICS, an association that champions the interests of the major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
An advocate for populations in the southern hemisphere, South Africa also supported initiatives that strengthened the position of the Global North. It encouraged participation in the AU-led New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which embraces the neoliberal economic policies of international financial institutions and the Northern industrialized countries—particularly those of the powerful Group of Seven (G7), an organization that aims to build consensus on economics, energy, security, and terrorism.16 In 2017, South Africa was the only African member of the Northern-dominated Group of 20 (G20), which included nineteen of the world’s largest industrialized and emerging economies, plus the EU.17 South Africa’s prominence was also evident in its designation as one of the EU’s strategic partners and its election to two terms on the UN Security Council (2007–8 and 2011–12), where it had a voice, if not a veto, on matters relating to foreign intervention in Africa. As a nonpermanent member of the Security Council, South Africa was susceptible to external pressure. It sometimes broke with AU positions to support those of the Western powers, as it did when it voted to establish a no-fly zone in Libya in 2011. However, it endorsed the AU’s call for UN reforms that would grant African countries two permanent and five rotating seats on the Security Council. South Africa, like Nigeria, aspired to assume a veto-wielding position.
Pretoria’s increasingly forceful presence in Africa and on the world stage was embraced by some on the continent as an example of Africans finding solutions for African problems. However, others charged that South Africa subordinated subregional and regional interests to its own interests—or to those of global capital. While Northern powers looked to Pretoria to protect their interests, Nigeria resisted South Africa’s heightened continental profile, and neighboring states remained wary of the subregional giant, which, no longer fettered by international sanctions, aggressively expanded its economic reach. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya—with their growing economies and strong ties to the West—joined Nigeria in challenging South Africa’s presumed right to represent the continent in global bodies.
International Jihadist Organizations and Their African Branches and Affiliates
Nonstate actors also intervened in Africa after the Cold War. The most significant of these were the international jihadist networks, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, along with their African branches and affiliates.
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda’s origins can be traced to the Cold War and to the intervention of outside powers in Afghanistan (see chapter 2). In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to assert control over a weak Afghan government that had failed to quash a Sunni insurgency that challenged Moscow’s hegemony in Central Asia. During the ensuing Soviet-Afghan War (1979–89), the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and their allies recruited, trained, and financed tens of thousands of Sunni militants from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America to topple the Soviet-backed Afghan regime. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the militants dispersed, fortified by sophisticated weaponry and new training in terror tactics. In the decades that followed, they established terrorist organizations and networks on several continents. Among the most significant was al-Qaeda, a Salafi jihadist organization that had established training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the war.18 In 1991 al-Qaeda moved its headquarters to Sudan, where it initiated a network of cells and allied organizations that operated in the Greater Horn.
AL-QAEDA’S AFRICAN AFFILIATES
In 2017, al-Qaeda had two important African branches: al-Shabaab (The Youth), which was based in Somalia and launched attacks in Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda; and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which operated in North Africa and the Western Sahel.19 Al-Qaeda also claimed a number of local affiliates and associated organizations. Some of these had splintered from AQIM because of internal disputes; others were the result of mergers between AQIM and groups that were indigenous to the region. Most of the African entities emerged from local conditions and turned to al-Qaeda for political, material, and propaganda aid after they were established. The following list, organized by country, is based on data collected in 2017. It is subject to change as allegiances fluctuate, existing organizations dissolve, and new ones form.
Algeria
Egypt
Libya
Mali