South Africa has served two terms as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. On both occasions its tenure was plagued by controversy. In the first term (2007–2008), human rights activists were demoralised by what they interpreted as the country's defence of ‘rogue powers’, when South Africa refused to support Security Council resolutions condemning and imposing sanctions on Iran, Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Similarly, in its second term (2011–2012), activists were horrified by South Africa's stance on the crises in Côte d'Ivoire and Libya.

On Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa's official neutral stance was interpreted as implicitly supporting Laurent Gbagbo. This went against the decisions of both the United Nations and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to recognise Allasane Ouattara as president after his victory in the country's national elections. On Libya, South Africa first supported Security Council Resolution 1973, which mandated the imposition of a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians against the army, but subsequently criticised the NATO-led bombing as an example of regime change backed by the West. In effect, the human rights community saw these positions as betraying the spirit of South Africa's own democratic transition and the international support that facilitated it (Human Rights Watch, 2012: 4; Neuer, 2007; Taljaard, 2009).

But is this label of betrayal not too simplistic a portrayal of South Africa's decision making? Is the suggestion that South African diplomats were simply appeasing the Russians and Chinese (Democratic Alliance, 2011) too lazy an explanation of South Africa's foreign policy? And is the same true of other explanations (see Bischoff, 2003; Nathan, 2005; Zondi, 2012) that see South Africa's foreign policy as incoherent and inconsistent? None of these views engage sufficiently with South African government officials’ explanations of their own decision making, or the concerns they have expressed about the abuse of multilateral institutions (such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) by the world's largest and most dominant countries, including their lack of even-handedness and their hypocritical posturing. While wishing to avoid being an unwitting agent of these great powers, however, one must be careful not to fall prey to politicians’ rationalisations of their aloofness from the concerns of ordinary citizens or their own undemocratic behaviour, even if such elites are from the developing world.