DAVID ADLER AND VARSHA GANDIKOTA-NELLUTLA: A moment of possibility on the global stage

SA assumed the presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) this month — a “huge opportunity”, as a recent Business Day editorial observed, “to make a difference” at the helm of a bloc that accounts for 85% of global GDP, 75% of international trade, and two-thirds of the world’s population (“SA must ensure G20 runs seamlessly”, December 9). 

SA’s opportunity is framed by the unique conditions under which it assumes the G20 presence — of geopolitical realignment, global economic turbulence and the growing recognition that the established international order is in dire need of reconstruction.

Over the past decade the richest 1% of humanity captured nearly half of all new wealth, while billions endured crushing poverty. Like the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, the Covid-19 virus was not confined by national borders. However, high-income countries captured 85% of initial Covid-19 vaccines, leaving low-income countries with just 0.3%.

SA has declared that its presidency will be guided by three foundational principles: solidarity, equality and sustainability. Realising these principles is no easy feat — the contemporary forces that sustain global injustice are formidable. But SA holds four aces, and if played right the ceremonial privileges bestowed on the G20 presidency can give way to foundational influence to reshape the international order.

The first is moral authority. SA’s courageous decision to bring Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was an electric moment for much of the Global South and popular majorities across the West. It recalled the memory of SA’s successful challenge to pharmaceutical companies at the turn of the century, to make life-saving medication available to people living with HIV and Aids.

While that moral authority may later have been squandered during years of poor leadership, the principled decision to take Israel to the ICJ last year has, deservedly, given SA extraordinary standing across much of the world.

In addition, SA’s role in Brics — affirmed by its deft handling of the expansion and strengthening of the coalition at the summit in Johannesburg last year — is another ace in its hand. The Brics coalition now includes states that represent 45% of the world’s population and economies worth more than 31.5% of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms. Even the most revanchist impulses in the West cannot ignore this.

However, the G20 is not about economics alone. SA’s decision to sustain its long-standing nonaligned position as geopolitical tensions became fevered in the wake of the Ukraine war — and placed it under significant pressure, domestic and international. Yet the courageous persistence of this nonaligned position now means SA is in the strong position of being able to hold the presidency of the G20 as an independent actor. This greatly enhances its prospects for effective engagement — and is thus the third ace in its hand.

The fourth ace is its world-class set of policy researchers, academic experts and impressive research institutes. The transformation of the international order will require a clear, incisive strategic outlook, and a concrete set of proposals that flow from it. SA, with a rich academic network wrought through the anti-apartheid struggle, has all the necessary intellectual infrastructure to produce proposals of the highest quality.

The prospects for those reforms are all but certain. Year after year we have seen governments fail to fully leverage their position at the helm of the G20. The rotating presidency was designed to democratise the G20’s governance, but has often ended up rendering the position too fleeting to be effective.

To make the most of its “huge opportunity,” then, SA must carefully avoid the following pitfalls that have derailed and distracted G20 presidencies of the past:

• Insularity — an excessive preoccupation with G20 internal dynamics at the expense of broader coalition-building and vision. Previous presidencies have often treated the G20 as a closed diplomatic circuit rather than a platform for catalysing wider systemic change. This narrow focus misunderstands the G20’s full potential role in global governance — in particular, now that the G20 has expanded to include the AU as a permanent member. As president of the group SA can marshal a new global consensus growing out of the Global South, rather than referring only to the precedents set by and for the group.
• Timidity — a fear of confronting the stark asymmetries within the global system. Many presidencies, assuming that outcomes have been predetermined by “great powers”, have retreated to the comfort of minor technical adjustments rather than taking on fundamental structural inequities. This overly cautious approach has been unable to meet even the most urgent demands of the present. When $100bn remains unfulfilled from the annual climate finance pledge — while global debt service payments from developing countries reached $443bn in 2023 — an overabundance of caution is tantamount to a dereliction of duty.
• Technocracy — an overemphasis on policy design at the expense of building political coalitions and strategy. Technical expertise is essential, but it is a necessary rather than sufficient condition for making progress. Past presidencies have often become mired in granular negotiations without securing the diplomatic foundations for adoption and implementation. Despite more than 100 technical working group meetings annually, G20 implementation rates of key commitments have averaged only 71% since 2008, highlighting the gap between technical solutions and political execution.

Fear of these pitfalls should not distract from the ample opportunities that lie ahead. SA’s preliminary agenda shows a sophisticated and encouraging appreciation of current policy imperatives and opportunities for structural reform. Translating this vision into concrete results could be enabled by a strategic framework built on the following opportunities for progress:

• Diplomacy — SA’s recent diplomatic achievements — including the first rand-denominated bonds from the Brics bank on a path to enduring dedollarisation — have demonstrated its capacity to align domestic interests with shared international objectives. In the G20 presidency SA can mobilise its newly burnished global standing and impressive set of alliances to forge new cross-regional coalitions. Its membership in the AU, Brics and the G20 can enable the building of issue-specific and pragmatic working alliances that transcend traditional North-South divisions.
• Temerity — The same boldness that was evident in the approach to the ICJ can be mobilised to pursue ambitious agenda-setting that challenges conventional parameters of international co-operation. Rather than accepting incremental reforms, the SA presidency could advance systemic solutions to, for instance, address the $4-trillion annual climate investment gap for developing countries or the $1.7-trillion annual shortfall in development financing. The current convergence of crises, with 52 developing countries in debt distress, has created unprecedented space to propose and drive strategies for structural reform.
• Pragmatism — Rather than promoting elegant proposals that have few prospects for implementation, SA can identify key institutions that can bring these proposals to life — even if it means starting small and scaling up. The admirable goal of reforming the UN Security Council, for example, need not come at the cost of smaller-scale initiatives to build multilateral clubs around debt or procurement to enhance the bargaining power of the Global South vis-à-vis the enduring structural privileges of the Global North.

As the Business Day editorial noted, the G20 presidency is a “huge opportunity” for SA. There is a huge opportunity to ensure that the G20 presidency is more than a ceremonial rotation and becomes a platform for catalysing systemic change.

As January approaches our challenge is to rally the world to SA’s side, matching the ambition set out in the concept note to seize this unprecedented opportunity to remake the international order.

• The authors are co-general co-ordinators of Progressive International.