Scholars typically draw on secondary material from their colleagues, newspaper reporting, and the public speeches of government officials to elucidate how South Africa crafts and carries out its foreign policy.
This approach is now changing. The accessibility of previously classified archival documents and the availability of former policy makers for research interviews promise new insight into the process of South African foreign policy decision-making. SAIIA invites you to an in-depth discussion on the state of foreign policy studies in South Africa and the power of primary research to alter key ideas about the conduct and content of South African foreign policy.
Speaker
Dr Christopher Williams was a Bradlow Fellow at SAIIA and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Witwatersrand. During his dissertation research he consulted a wide array of South African archives and interviewed more than two dozen former South African defence and foreign affairs officials.