Cyril Ramaphosa’s trip abroad this week included arguing for Africa to be given a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (@PresidencyZA/X)
‘The time is now.” Those were President Cyril Ramaphosa’s closing words in the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday as he called for next year’s G20 meeting to sharpen its focus on sustainable development in the Global South.
“It cannot be business as usual. It cannot be more platitudes and empty promises.”
His rallying call comes at an interesting time for the world. Just as Ramaphosa has spent this week courting investment in New York, so have the Northern powers tried to woo developing nations into explicit alliances.
On Tuesday at the UN Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on African and Latin American countries to “force Russia into peace”. Two weeks ago, the same council indicated an openness to the American idea of giving two permanent seats to African countries.
But Ramaphosa and many of his peers in the Global South have displayed a resoluteness that is unlikely to be breached by the fresh overtures. South Africa, for one, has frustrated much of Europe and North America with its non-aligned stance on the Ukraine war in particular.
If the West is serious about including African countries as players in a neoliberal, multipolar world, it has to demonstrate that its intention goes beyond the ceremonial. Its actions must prove that we have escaped the Cold War paradigm — where “third world” nations were yanked into one of two orbits of influence.
For all the promised prestige of the prospective security council invite, in many ways it is only a ticket to the cheap seats.
Russia, China, France, the US and Britain will retain the only veto, just as they have done for the past 79 years. As long as there is a reluctance to share real power, the legitimacy of the body as a guardian of international law and security will always be questioned.
And who will be the two representatives of Africa? The continent is a collection of stark perspectives, interests and circumstances. There is the inherent danger that whoever is invited into the club is brought in to rubber-stamp and legitimise.
Even if the invitation was extended with the best of intentions, the response cannot be considered lightly. Attitudes towards Africa will only change if they are challenged.
Africa taking a seat on the security council would be more meaningful, for instance, if it resulted in the conflicts ravaging the continent — top among them the wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — commanding the same level of global attention and sense of urgency to find a resolution as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Ramaphosa has promised that those real conversations will take place when South Africa hosts the G20 summit for the first time next year. Until they do, platitudes and empty promises are all we’ll get.