The foreign relations of South Africa have spanned from the country's time as Dominion and later Realm of the British Empire to its isolationist policies under Apartheid to its position as a responsible international actor taking a key role in Africa.
South Africa is active in the United Nations, the African Union and the Commonwealth of Nations. Considered a possible permanent addition to the United Nations Security Council, South Africa was elected in 2006 by the UN General Assembly to serve on the Security Council for the first time ever, and again in 2010, where it is currently serving a mandate that ends 31 December 2012.
Read more about Foreign Relations Of South Africa: Post-apartheid, United Nations Security Council, Africa, Europe, Americas, Rest of World
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“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
—Hettie V., South African white anti-apartheid activist and feminist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 21, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)
“There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces
The guttural sorrow of the refugees.”
—Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)
“In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.”
—John Reed (1887–1920)
“Mormon colonization south of this point in early times was characterized as “going over the Rim,” and in colloquial usage the same phrase came to connote violent death.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)