The central lesson is clear: self-reliance is not a retreat from the world; it is a refusal to exist in permanent vulnerability.
In a world shaped by centuries of extraction, domination and enforced dependency, the renewed emphasis on national self-reliance is not a luxury impulse but a corrective one. Globalisation, as experienced by much of the Global South, was never a neutral process of mutual exchange. It was structured through colonial supply chains that externalised risk, hollowed out local capacity and concentrated control elsewhere.
Today’s polycrisis — pandemics, climate shocks, geopolitical fragmentation, technological choke points and energy volatility — has merely exposed what was always true: systems built on dependency collapse first, and those who rely on others for survival fundamentals are the least free when crises arrive.
Technology has become one of the most powerful instruments of modern control. Digital infrastructure, communications networks, cloud platforms, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity tools are not simply commercial products; they encode power relationships.
Post-colonial states that depend on externally controlled technologies inherit a new form of dependency that mirrors older colonial structures. Extraction has been replaced by data capture, surveillance exposure, restrictive licensing regimes and the threat of unilateral service denial. Technological self-reliance, in this sense, is not about rejecting cooperation but about refusing structural subordination. It is the ability to build, adapt and secure critical systems locally so that national continuity is not contingent on foreign approval or geopolitical alignment.
Food dependency has likewise long been used as a tool of control, both explicitly under colonial rule and implicitly through modern trade asymmetries. A population reliant on distant markets for basic sustenance is politically and socially vulnerable. Global food systems prioritise efficiency and profit over resilience, and when shocks occur — droughts, floods, war, shipping disruptions or fertiliser shortages — the burden falls disproportionately on import-dependent societies. Food self-reliance is therefore not a nostalgic return to subsistence, but a strategic assertion of dignity: the capacity to feed one’s population, stabilise prices and protect social cohesion without exposure to external leverage or speculative volatility.
Energy dependency follows the same colonial logic. Control over energy flows has historically translated into control over political choices. States dependent on imported fuel are constrained in their diplomacy, economic planning and capacity to respond independently to crises.
Price shocks and supply interruptions reverberate through every sector of society, reproducing cycles of instability that disproportionately affect formerly colonised economies. Building locally controlled, diversified energy systems is not merely an environmental or economic choice; it is an act of decolonisation that reclaims policy autonomy and breaks long-standing patterns of coercive dependency.
We must therefore resist the soothing language of net-zero neutrality when it conceals new forms of vulnerability that fully expose energy security to foreign powers.
Medical dependency offers one of the clearest contemporary examples of colonial continuity. During the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccine nationalism, export bans and intellectual property barriers made unmistakably clear whose lives were prioritised in global markets. Countries without domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing, diagnostics capacity or biomedical research infrastructure were forced into competition under conditions that were neither fair nor humane.
Medical self-reliance is thus about more than emergency preparedness. It is about the right to health without subordination, the ability to respond to local disease burdens and the development of scientific capacity that serves populations rather than external shareholders.
South Africa’s experience during the apartheid era presents a stark and complex case study in enforced self-reliance under isolation. International sanctions and embargoes were responses to a morally indefensible system of racial tyranny, but they also revealed a structural reality: when access to global systems is withdrawn, states either collapse or build internal capacity.
South Africa chose the latter — albeit while excluding black South Africans — developing significant indigenous capabilities across defence, energy, industry and technology. This history must be examined critically, without cynicism or romanticism, because it demonstrates both the power and the danger of self-reliance pursued for the wrong ends.
In the military sphere, isolation drove the development of a domestic arms industry capable of designing armoured vehicles, artillery systems and integrated weapons platforms. Vehicles such as the Ratel, Casspir and Buffel reflected an emphasis on survivability and adaptation to local conditions, while artillery systems like the G5 and G6 demonstrated advanced engineering under constraint. These achievements showed that technological capability does not require Western permission, but they were embedded in a security apparatus designed to preserve an oppressive political order rather than protect a free society.
Energy isolation produced a different form of innovation. Cut off from reliable oil imports, South Africa expanded large-scale synthetic fuel production through coal-to-liquids processes, creating one of the world’s most significant synthetic fuel industries. This was an expensive and environmentally damaging path, but it underscored a fundamental lesson: when survival is at stake, states can mobilise scientific and industrial capacity at scale. The lesson for the present is not to replicate apartheid-era racial chauvinism, but to recognise that energy sovereignty is achievable when political will and long-term planning align.
Industrial self-sufficiency extended beyond security sectors. Sanctions forced domestic capacity-building in heavy engineering, chemicals, mining technology, metallurgy and manufacturing. Some of this capability survived the democratic transition and entered the civilian economy, demonstrating that self-reliance can generate durable social value when knowledge, skills and infrastructure are repurposed for inclusive development rather than control.
At the same time, apartheid-era programmes such as Project Coast reveal the darkest consequences of self-reliance divorced from ethics.
The central lesson is clear: self-reliance is not a retreat from the world; it is a refusal to exist in permanent vulnerability. For post-colonial societies, it is about dismantling inherited dependency structures while building the capacity to engage globally on equal terms. True self-reliance strengthens cooperation by making it voluntary rather than coerced, reciprocal rather than extractive. In a world entering prolonged instability, the choice is not between global integration and self-reliance, but between dependency and dignity.
Andile Lungisa is an ANC NEC member and former ANC Youth League deputy president.