This article addresses the question of the new South Africa’s relationships with other countries in Africa in the context of the idea of an ‘African Renaissance’ which has recently gained currency. The authors identify two opposing conceptions of Africa’s development, which they call ‘globalist’ and ‘Africanist’ respectively, and explore the tensions besetting South Africa’s participation in an ‘Africanist’ project. They discuss the dilemma of South Africa’s role on the continent as both an obvious and an impossible candidate for leadership, and argue for an ‘Africanist’ and post‐structuralist approach to the political, economic and cultural development of the African continent.

This article offers an alternative account of the origins of academic IR to the conventional Aberystwyth-centered one. Informed by a close reading of the archive, our narrative proposes we also provide an alternative to the nationally-limited revisionist accounts.

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The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is notjust water, but the blood of our ancestors. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. . . , Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. -Chief Seattle (1852)The three concepts are always linked by a critical synergy, since we live, simultaneously, in our pasts, presents and futures. What we do is shaped by the collision or collusion of memory and moment, hope and fear.