Where are We? South Africa and Africa’s Role in the Contemporary World

Professor Adam Habib, Director of SOAS University of London and former VC of Wits University delivered the keynote address at an event with the National School of Government and partners on Advancing Equitable Global Governance in Times of Turbulence: China and Global South Cooperation Event on 28 May 2025.

The event included a panel discussion  

Read the full speech here:

We live in a dangerous historical moment. The world order is under severe threat by one of its own architects - the US - who wants to continue receiving the benefit of being the premier global political power without taking on any of its responsibilities. Donald Trump and his tariff wars are the latest salvo in this assault on globalisation and the world order, but his actions are not the first and neither will it be the last. We saw manifestations of this in the Iraq war and its aftermath, in the 2008 crisis and Western government’s response to it, in the economic assault on China during the first Trump presidency and its continuation under Biden, in the vaccine hoarding and the crude nationalism that defined the behaviour of western governments in their response to the Covid pandemic, and in the bipartisan duplicity of the US and the West in the application of global norms and international law in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and now Gaza. We saw it in the weaponisation of the dollar for narrow foreign policy objectives by all US administrations and Western governments’ complicity in it. In essence, this moment has been building up for almost two decades and is the natural outcome of a long process of the differential application of international law and the strategic immunity demanded and received by the United States for its sometimes-malevolent behaviour in interactions with the global community.
Many in our midst will of course welcome this moment. They have long wanted to be freed from the political shackles of what they perceive as western hypocrisy. Others, perhaps a minority, prefer we align with the US, accede to its demands and receive the limited benefits that may flow from alignment with the superpower. But it would be fair to say that until now our government has preferred a strategic autonomy, a non-alignment that enables a navigation between competing powers, that is supportive of international rules and norms but wants to limit its selective application, and wants to serve as a bridge between the West and the Global South. We share this aspiration with other emergent regional powers like Brazil and India, each with their own specific political orientations, and all three of us would see ourselves as non-western but not anti-Western.

Yet we as a country have neither the political acumen nor the bureaucratic ability of a Brazil or India to navigate this complex world we are entering into. We have squandered our political cache through corruption and state capture, we have eroded our bureaucratic and diplomatic abilities by ignoring professional excellence in state appointments and through crude cadre deployment, and we lack the political acumen to use leverage in our interactions with global powers and in navigating our external relations both because of our deployment of simplistic ideological formulae and a lack of political pragmatism. In essence, we are collectively hopelessly out of our depth in managing the world that is yet to come.

The Tariff Wars and the Restructuring of the Global Order

Globalisation and the current global order are under serious threat, but its collapse is not inevitable. It is dependent on how Trump and those around him respond to the reactions of his tariffs, by the markets and by other countries. Most of the tariffs have been temporarily suspended, and we will have to see whether they are reinstated.1

The two drivers for US behaviour in recent years is the rise of China and the fact that it could constitute a challenge to its hegemonic status, and the deep political polarisation within the US electorate largely as a result of inequality and the deep conviction among many within the citizenry that the spoils of globalisation have not been shared equally among all. Of course this has to do with public policy in the United States and the failure of successive administrations to redistribute resources more effectively within the nation state. But successive administrations have also deflected from their governance failure by projecting China as the great villain who does not compete fairly and who is increasingly a threat to the long-term prosperity of the United States. Many in the US foreign policy establishment therefore hold that a containment strategy is required for China.2 Some of this involves invoking anti-market and anti-competitive rules and regulations that prevent technological exports to, and consumer imports from, China. This is effect constitutes the weaponisation of trade policy, both of the US and those of allies, to prevent China’s continued economic development and advancement.

But the containment strategy also requires redirecting resources to the IndoPacific - China’s backyard - to contain its rise and relative dominance.3 But this would involve extricating the US from costly and increasingly disastrous military adventures in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Herein lies the impetus for demanding that Europe and other allies like Japan step up to pay for their own defence. But it also neatly dovetails with a small isolationist strand among the far right who would like to close of the borders and bunker down in North America;4 a possibility that is neither feasible nor likely in the interconnected world we have become.

Trump’s tariff wars and foreign policy decisions must be understood in this political context. His penchant for political theatre and personal ego gives US foreign policy a chaotic political flavour that is disruptive not only of ally and rival, but also of the broader global order. It has had the global benefit of putting the issues in the public glare, and galvanised both allies and rivals to urgently develop their own specific national and regional responses. But it is also fracturing the Western Alliance whose constituents increasingly hold that the US is an unreliable partner and that they therefore need to either rely on their own or build alternative alliances.

Whatever happens in the world of tariffs - whether the US continues with these, or as is more likely, begins to moderate them - the future of globalisation is no longer solely in its hands. It is also dependent on how China reacts, how the EU respond, and how countries in the South like India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and even SA respond to the challenge. If China shifts to a consumption economy, settles geographical conflicts with neighbours and is willing to provide global goods like defence pacts, a trading currency and the like, then you may have a restructured form of globalisation. I doubt this will happen, at least in the short term, but it is not impossible.

Agent of change

Yet China has become an agent of change in recent years. This has been evident in recent weeks. President Xi Jinping has accelerated his foreign policy engagements especially among ASEAN nations highlighting both the economic benefits of continued trade with and investment from China.5 He has stressed the importance of equality and respect in partnerships knowing the political sensitivity of this among many of the political elites and the broader citizenry in post colonial countries in Asia and Africa.6 It is a simple diplomatic lesson that Western political elites would do well to heed.
In any case, China has for some years been building its leverage in order to manage a more politically hostile United States and Western Alliance. The essential tenets of its plan have been to reduce its reliance on US and western assets and trade and to reprioritise relations with the rest of world beginning primarily with the Indo-Pacific region. The former has involved reducing its reserves of US treasury bonds from $1.3 trillion in 2011 to $765 billion in April 2025.7 These have in part been redirected to securing hard assets across the world: mines to secure supplies of essential minerals, energy resources and logistics infrastructure, and even land for agriculture and food security. Much of this captured under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative; an ambitious international developmental plan to integrate China into the rest of the world.8

This Chinese global developmental agenda has been twinned with an international political framework described as The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence; mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.9 These principles were also supported by African and Asian countries in the Bandung conference in 1955 and became the political framework for the Non-aligned Movement from the 1960s.10 They have also been enshrined in a variety of United Nations documents over the ensuing decades. It is worth noting that the essential thrust of these principles questions the universalist doctrine advanced by the West in the last 30 years: the promotion of democracy & free markets, the insistence on individual rights and responsibilities, and the willingness to intervene across territorial boundaries to enable their adoption and practice.11
But China is not the only player repositioning itself in relation to the United States. Europe and the United Kingdom have also been forced into this position by the actions of the United States which has increasingly become an erratic ally and partner. This has been most alarming in recent months for European leaders as the US sought rapprochement with Russia, intervened unilaterally in Ukraine to broker a peace that may be decisively against the Nation’s and the broader European interest, and effectively abandoned its post World War 2 commitment to underwrite the security of Western Europe. European nations including Germany & France and now even the UK, have been forced to dramatically increase their military expenditure and to take charge of their own security.12 And while this seems politically sensible from the perspective of these countries and may even be beneficial to the US financial purse, it is worth noting that it will have the consequence of eroding Europe’s military and political dependence on the US and thereby enable its own strategic autonomy.

This strategic autonomy is by no means guaranteed. It could be enabled by a cultural distinction that Europe shares vis-vis the US. While both Europe and the US shared a commitment to a set of values - democracy, individual rights, human rights, market economies - their practice of this differs markedly. Europe still shares a distinct commitment to regulating the market, containing excessive enrichment and to protecting the more vulnerable within its midst. It also shares a commitment to what Christopher Coker refers to as cosmopolitanism; a commitment to civilian power, the promotion of international norms and law, and the ‘’embracing of global governance as a way of syndicating its values across the world’’.13 In essence, whereas the Americans prefer warfare, the Europeans tend to gravitate to ‘lawfare’ (pg. 6).14 Of course, as has been mentioned earlier, the European practice of this has not always been consistent as we have seen in Ukraine and Gaza, but its identification with this political orientation is at least distinctive from the US.

Hesitant political agency

Nevertheless, despite these enabling features of strategic autonomy, there are at least two substantive obstacles: a modest economic dynamism and a hesitant political agency. The former is rooted in the fact that despite all of its strengths in traditional industries - automobiles, consumer goods, the luxury sector, engineering and pharmaceuticals - its economic growth has been challenged since the 2008 recession when compared to either China or the United States. This is manifested in a 21% GDP growth for Europe since 2008, relative to the US and China of 72% and 290% respectively.15 Even more alarming for European policy makers is their collective lethargy in the new technological industries of AI, data science, renewable energy, and sustainability focussed technologies; this despite their large pool of skilled tech professionals and early stage startups. If Europe is to chart its own separate path in the new world order, then its economy has to regain its relative dynamism in relation to China and the US.
 

Moreover, Europe will also need to overcome its political hesitancy in the establishment of transnational alliances and in addressing major global challenges. Part of this hesitancy has to do with the different value system of Europe from that China, Russia and much of Asia and Africa. But most of it has to do with its collective dependence on the US for its economic market and its security guarantees. But how tenable is this now with the increasing unreliableness of the US, and the emergence of alternative lucrative markets in the east as the fulcrum of world trade shifts to the Indo-Pacific. If the US is no longer a reliable partner, as it has proven to be on multiple occasions, what does Europe do? Does Europe continue with the Western Alliance in its present form to the detriment of its collective interest, or should it be willing to either form new alliances
- with the Chinese for instance - or assert its own collective global leadership. This will ultimately determine whether the world order evolves in a bipolar or multi polar political direction.

What is worth noting is that whatever happens, it will take a long time. Thirty to forty years of economic integration cannot simply be decoupled overnight. And there will be many disruptions and distortions along the way that will impact on people’s daily lives, including among them the cost of some goods, the availability of others, the loss of jobs, and the like. As this plays out, there are three issues worth considering. Why has globalisation unravelled? How long will it take to play out, and finally how do we mitigate its consequences. Remember the ending of the first globalisation era between 1870 and 1910 was followed by two world wars, the murder of millions, and economic devastation worldwide.16 If we were to descend into a similar outcome, we will not survive as a human species. Even if we avoid this, how are we going to collaborate to address the myriad of transnational challenges - climate change, war, pandemics and the like? This is what has to be thought through collectively by the human community in the months and years ahead.
Africa and South Africa: Positioning and Options in the Years Ahead

Where is Africa in this reconfiguration of the global order and what are its options? Two views tend to prevail. First, there is a small cohort of political actors who would prefer that we align with the US and derive the benefits from a positive relationship with the world’s premier power. This is the perspective of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in South Africa,17 and a more cruder, almost sycophantic expression of this is articulated by the far right AfriForum.18 But it is also articulated in other parts of the continent. How else can one explain the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) - President Tshisekedi’s offer to the US to provide preferential access to minerals in exchange for security guarantees and military assistance.19 Yet it would be fair to say that this is a minority among Africa’s political elites.

 Multipolar world 

The vast majority of political actors in South Africa and Africa - leadership and elites, parties, activists and intellectuals - interpret the emergence of a bipolar or multipolar world as beneficial for their developmental prospects. They believe that this provides greater options for investment capital and trade opportunities, enhancing their negotiating leverage and resulting in less onerous political conditionalities. It is also seen to allow them a strategic autonomy in navigating the international system, akin to Brazil, India, and even the Republic of Ireland.
Yet it is worth saying that strategic autonomy is not the norm. Indeed, it is very rare for small countries or those in the majoritarian world to succeed in developing a strategic autonomy that does not entail punitive costs. Brazil, India and Ireland are able to chart this path in particular because they have three necessary assets: leverage, bureaucratic capability, and political will and agency manifested in foreign policy cohesiveness and agility. Africa and South Africa are lacking on all these fronts.

The singular asset that India has is its population and market size. This asset enables it to serve both as location of production and consumption, which has become all the more important given the US and Western desire to create a counter balance to China. Brazil has its geographic size, its mid-size population (three times that of South Africa), its mineral wealth, and its political importance to South America. Ireland is a small country with very little independent leverage but it uses its strategic location in the European Union as its strategic lever.
Africa and South Africa have none of this currently. The continents and the country’s mineral reserves are valuable but can only be used as a lever if they are managed cohesively and are an essential pipeline into the world’s productive systems. Since 1994, South Africa’s political stewardship of its mining sector has been chaotic at best, and while it has enabled the enrichment of individuals, particularly those close to the ANC, it has not served either as a developmental stimulant or as a political lever for strategic autonomy. The same is true for much of the rest of the continent where there are abundant mineral resources. Africa’s mineral wealth has been squandered, through political corruption, managerial incompetence, and what are effectively extractive relationships with multinational corporations and external powers.

As for market size, Africa has a population of around 1.5 billion people which is likely to double by 2070.20 But this can only be a strategic lever if they collectively constitute a common market. And while there are steps in this direction most significantly through the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on 1 January 2021, its full realisation is still a distant goal.21 Given South Africa’s population of a mere 63 million, AfCFTA would have to be central to its arsenal of leverage for strategic autonomy, which is not viable at least for the foreseeable future.

Bureaucratic capability is also not an asset that South Africa or African governments exhibit. The ‘Development state’ is a political label that is often rhetorically deployed but very rarely practiced. Indeed, South Africa has squandered much of its bureaucratic capability since 1994 with racially chauvinist interpretations of Transformation, cadre deployment and outright political corruption. Its diplomatic corp has been significantly weakened and their professional capability eroded through political appointments constituting the vast majority of ambassadorial deployments throughout the world.22 It is an indictment on DIRCO and the country that if a significant number of its 103 embassies, 14 consulates, 4 diplomatic representations were closed, bar a few in selected countries, there would be minimal impact on our economic trade, development prospects, and political relevance.

The situation is not very different for the rest of the continent. Political appointments and limited diplomatic capabilities plague African embassies around the world. The same is true within the continent. There was a time when African diplomacy was in the ascendancy. Only 25 years ago the African Union and its attendant infrastructure was being built. A pact between Nigeria and South Africa underwrote the continent’s renaissance with political stability being prioritised, and African conflicts being formally attended to by continental diplomats and leaders. Between 1994 and 2008, Africa’s conflicts had declined by two thirds. And then about 2007/2008 domestic politics intervened in the case of both Nigeria and South Africa, bequeathing them a combination of corrupt, ill, and incompetent leaders that diverted the nations’ attentions, and ultimately eroded both their national prospects and the continent’s future.23

Here we are again. African conflicts, wars and deaths have spiralled, the AU’s and nation states abilities and desires to address these conflicts has eroded as the diplomatic spat between Rwanda and South Africa demonstrated. The net effect is the civil war in the Sudan, the multi- national war in the DRC, the continued violence in South Sudan, and the conflicts in Somalia,

Ethiopia, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, and Lake Chad. In total, Africa is plagued by 35 armed conflicts. Strategic autonomy to effect developmental outcomes on the continent is not possible in such an unstable political environment.
All of this has compromised South Africa and Africa’s Political cohesiveness and diplomatic agility. South Africa has tried to chart an independent path in international affairs with its participation in BRICS, its insistent on not taking sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, and its strong criticism of Israel and its initiation of a case in the International Court of Justice. No African country has been as committed to an independent strategic stance as South Africa has. And yet it has also been found wanting in its diplomatic agility manifested mostly in its surprise at the strong reaction of the Trump presidency in its targeting of South Africa both for its erroneous assumptions on the treatment of white farmers and the country’s alignment with adversaries of the US. There is a strong likelihood that this will ultimately manifest in South Africa’s exclusion from AGOA or even the complete disbandment of the continental trade initiative. Either way, South Africa has not anticipated adverse consequences for its actions, and unlike China, had not prepared for this by establishing new markets, and opportunities to mitigate the consequences of Trump’s actions.

All of this again speaks to the erosion of the country’s diplomatic and political capabilities. Strategic autonomy is dependent on economic and political nimbleness and South Africa has demonstrated neither in recent years. The consequences both for it and the rest of the continent are likely to be catastrophic. But even if this is not the case, the analysis herein suggests that at a minimum, Africa is hopelessly out of its depth in capitalising on the emerging bipolar or multipolar world to play off great powers against each other, maximise its own negotiating leverage and establish trade and economic relations decidedly to its advantage. Instead, as in the case of the last bipolar historical moment when the US and the Soviet Union were locked in a global battle for supremacy, African nations remain vulnerable to being played off against each other resulting in a succession of proxy wars for mineral spoils, extractive economic relations and ultimate marginalisation from the global economy and world order.

Where to from here?

I take no pleasure in observing and thinking through all of this. South Africa and Africa is my home and its success is the success of my family and myself. After all this is where I will return to. But if we are to succeed as a nation and a continent, then we need to recognise our challenges for what they are, understand their causal drivers, and address these pragmatically. What then should we be doing? My recommendations focus on South Africa, although much of what I have to say could easily speak to other parts of our continent.
First, our singular foreign policy priority should be AfCFTA. Without this, our long-term economic development is imperilled, as is the establishment of the political leverage that enables South Africa and Africa’s strategic autonomy and independence in global affairs.

Second, Professional excellence must be taken seriously. In this specific case it refers to the professionalisation of our diplomatic corps and limits to the political appointments of ambassadors from the cohort of former ANC politicians and their family members. But professional excellence needs to be extended far beyond the diplomatic corps. We cannot continue to be compromised by incompetent municipal and national governance. And this is not solely the result of corruption and cadre deployment as so much of the public discourse focusses on. These are indeed causal factors, but they are as much tied to a transformation agenda that eschews academic and professional excellence. We lie to ourselves if we hold that this is not the case. How else do we explain the collapse of public institutions, municipal services, state owned enterprises and the like?

The debate around the latest court case on equity appointments and diversity quotas launched by the DA suggests that neither it nor the ANC (or frankly any of the other political parties) have learnt anything from the experiences of the last three decades. The same is true of our intelligentsia as the polarised and often vacuous public debate on the issue so ably demonstrates. Representativity without excellence violates our constitution as does excellence without representation. The two are in tension, but can be reconciled as Singapore so ably demonstrates. South Africa would do well to take a leaf from Singapore which has brought to the fore a global model of transformation that exemplifies rather than rejects academic and professional excellence.

Third, SA needs to be aware of and prepare for the reprisals that are likely to follow if it charts an independent path in global affairs. This requires a diplomatic agility that first understands the form that such reprisals could take and the consequences thereof, and then the diplomatic agility to seek new markets, alternative sources of investment and additional political allies that can mitigate the adverse reactions to national choices. South Africa also needs to develop a national political identity that enables this and does not enhance our vulnerability. As of now, too much of our public discourse is determined by immature political actors and a silly politics that is based on cheap emotional satisfaction. Our public discourse is saturated with racial chauvinism, race baiting and acrimony driven to achieve a fleeting and childish emotional gratification by politicians and activists. This is essentially what the ‘kill the boer’ song is about, as are the marches on white settlements, and the almost facile public discourse on Transformation and who is indigenous to the country.
This is a far state of affairs from the non-racialism our democratic transition promised and our constitution envisages. Neither does it advance the cause of representativity and economic and social justice unless the agenda is of enabling equality by impoverishing all. There is an urgent need for the Presidency and government to steward the national discourse away from the racialised and chauvinistic rhetoric of fractious politicians and even some public commentators to one that promotes national cohesiveness. Only then are we likely to create a public and global identity of non-racialism that permeated our national political profile at the dawn of our democratic transition which is perhaps the singular bulwark against the misrepresentations by that ragtag cohort of far-right individuals in AfriForum intent on destroying this country.

We live in a dangerous historical moment which requires of us to collectively behave in a manner that recognises our interests and charts a pathway to their realisation. This need not mean a capitulation to one or other powerful country or regional entity. But the bipolar or multipolar world that is evolving does potentially enable the possibility of South Africa to play off global powers against each other so as to maximise opportunities for its own national economic development and independence. Yet this will only happen if we collectively become agents of our own change. It will require developing a leverage which others take seriously, and a government and public administration that allow us to navigate our global engagements in a manner that benefits our people and their development.

We are not yet there. But we can be if we have the courage to understand our circumstances, develop a path to changing this, recognising the trade offs required and making the hard decisions thereof, and finally transcending the immature emotionally driven politics we have become immersed in. We can be the architects of our own collective future but it will require collective courage and political decisiveness.