Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks during the pre-launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, in the framework of the G20 Ministerial Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 24, 2024. President Cyril Ramaphosa takes over the G20 Presidency during a time of turmoil, uncertainty, instability and insecurity in world politics. He also has a tough act to follow after the G20 was hosted by Brazil under the leadership of President Lula da Silva, says the writer.
Image: AFP
Dr. Trevor Ngwane
THE honour of hosting the G20 summit comes with great responsibilities and challenges for South Africa and its president Cyril Ramaphosa.
The G20 is an important international body which is expected to contribute to the improvement of global governance especially financial and economic management.
However, Ramaphosa takes over during a time of turmoil, uncertainty, instability and insecurity in world politics. He also has a tough act to follow after the G20 was hosted by Brazil under the leadership of President Lula da Silva, who was able to successfully launch the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, among other successes.
Ramaphosa also faces domestic political challenges including the fact that he now heads a Government of National Unity (GNU) after his party, the ANC, failed to win an outright majority in the last elections. His finance minister, Enoch Godongwana, was humiliated just before he attended the G20 finance ministers’ meeting when he was barred from presenting his budget to the National Assembly because of opposition by parties inside and outside the GNU.
Furthermore, a spanner was thrown into the works when Trump admonished the ANC for ill-treating the Afrikaners after complaints were laid at his door by Afriforum, a white ethnic nationalist organization.
South Africa has lost favour with the U.S. government with Trump saying he will not attend the G20 including stopping his foreign and finance ministers from attending.
This is a conundrum for Ramaphosa whose government needs trade and aid from the US including benefitting from the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) which allows duty-free access to the U.S. market.
The effectiveness and future of the G20 are also in question in the light of the turmoil caused by a rapidly changing geopolitical and economic situation, largely due to Trump’s economic protectionist and politically aggressive interventions including the rise of rightwing governments and sentiments in the world.
What can Ramaphosa achieve from his chairing of the G20? What will the working class benefit from South Africa’s hosting of the G20? Has Ramaphosa been handed a broken institution?
These are important questions for the masses in South Africa and other countries in the African continent who must navigate and survive in a world wreaked by social, economic and political problems including high rates of poverty, unemployment and inequality, the climate crisis, wars and genocides.
A body such as the G20 is expected to provide a platform where world leaders can discuss and find solutions to some of the problems.
The G20 consists of 19 countries plus the European Union and the African Union. It started in 1999 as a forum for finance ministers and central bank governors of the world’s biggest economies in the wake of the Asian financial crisis.
The 2008 economic meltdown saw heads of state joining the body and it became a leadership summit to discuss the world’s economic problems. The G20 boasts about 80% of global GDP, 75% of global exports and 60% of the world’s population.
The concept of a G20 originates from the G7, formed in 1975, which consists of the world’s economic behemoths, namely the US, the UK, France, West Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada. The G7 members felt that their exclusive club was not adequate in addressing the financial crises especially given the increasing importance of emerging Global South economies such as China and India.
They sought reinforcement to preserve and strengthen the global capitalist economic order.
Membership of the G20 is premised on the acceptance of the capitalist principles of private property, profitmaking, competition, exploitation of labour and the architecture of the global capitalist economy with all its hierarchies and inequalities.
Being a member of the G20 meant being the invited guests of the imperialist G7 countries who made their riches through robbery, plunder and colonization. G20 countries play according to the rules of the capitalist order and its neoliberal precepts; they all subscribe to the goal of salvaging elusive economic growth and development.
Civil society and labour are brought into the G20 through ‘engagement groups’ such as the C20 for civil society, L20 for labour, B20 for business, W20 for women, T20 for think tanks, etc.
The C20 advocates for civil society’s interests inside the G20 and is allowed to make demands and recommendations to the world leaders. The L20 was launched in Gqeberha on 17 February, co-hosted by the country’s union federations COSATU, NACTU, FEDUSA and SAFTU under the theme ‘Living and Working in an Unequal World: Ensuring Decent Work and Decent Lives’. Several meetings will be held culminating in a submission to the G20 heads of state in November.
While there has been some progress with such submissions and discussions in previous G20 summits, most of the resolutions made in joint statements since its formation in 1991 have been ‘as solid as gas fumes’ with little consequence management for countries that underperform.
The resolution on ending the financing of coal power plants abroad taken at the 2021 summit in Rome, left out domestic coal investments and saw coal-fired power generation balloon by 10% in the following year, to US $150 worldwide. South Africa continues burning coal including fueling the genocide in Israel through coal exports.
Zingiswa Losi, COSATU president and Representative from L20 called for ‘a new social contract’. She is advocating collaboration between capital, labour and the state believing that this can help win the workers’ demands for decent work and decent lives.
History teaches that the politics of class collaboration has won the South African working class very little and looking to the G20 for solutions is a false hope.
The interests of labour and civil society cannot be fully accommodated and expressed in two engagement groups, L20 and C20, because they are not merely sectoral interests.
Under capitalism, the two principal classes are the workers and the capitalists, and the working class is the revolutionary subject. It must lead the struggle against capitalism.
Workers need a revitalization of working-class leadership. Labour must provide the centre of authority in the struggle for a better world.
Dr Trevor Ngwane is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg.