What a breath of fresh air last week’s state visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was. It was the clearest demonstration yet of the difference between neutrality and non-alignment. South Africa’s position is the latter, not the former; a distinction that President Cyril Ramaphosa and his foreign ministers have been at pains for some years now to explain to their many detractors at home.
A triumph so resounding that it was preceded by hasty and cordial phone calls to Ramaphosa, first from President Vladimir Putin and then from President Donald Trump, the visit was another in a series of principled diplomatic moves under the Ramaphosa administration, and a significant departure from the foreign policy doctrine of his predecessors
For the past 30 years, the political dominance of the ANC has militated against nuance in the analysis of the government’s foreign policy. Our political discourse has traditionally conflated the ANC with whomever happened to be president at the time, and treated them as one and the same. Yet this has never really been the case. Each new president has brought his own foreign policy.
Nowhere is this distinction clearer than between Ramaphosa and his immediate predecessor, Jacob Zuma. Zuma will be remembered for his problematic, cosy relationship with Putin and for his disgraceful decision in 2015 to invite the then Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir — for whom the International Criminal Court had issued a warrant of arrest — to an African Union summit in Sandton.
By comparison, Ramaphosa and Naledi Pandor, the then minister of international relations, skilfully negotiated the non-attendance by Putin — who has likewise been indicted by the ICC — at the 2023 Brics summit in Johannesburg. South Africa’s relationship with Russia remained intact and Pretoria rightly adhered to its obligations under the Rome Statute.
Ramaphosa has further established South Africa’s position on the centrality of the international rules-based order by bringing a case to the International Court of Justice which challenges the international system’s commitment to its equal application.
He has not shirked his duties in Africa either, repudiating the autocratic regime of President Paul Kagame and Rwanda’s blood-soaked occupation of the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
By making strategic choices and leveraging influence where it can, South Africa signals that other middle powers — especially in the Global South — can likewise play a principled and constructive role in ending geopolitical strife while protecting and advancing their own national interests.
Yet analysis and commentary in South Africa has not caught up to this reality. Still preoccupied with questions along the lines of “Who is South Africa’s international big brother?”, commentators often frame the answer as an obvious choice between the US and China (with Russia occasionally — and inexplicably — getting a look-in). Such a discourse seems to be concerned only that the ANC’s so-called historical ties to Russia and China mean it will ignore their human rights violations; but there is mounting, credible evidence that this administration prioritises human rights above the historical alliances that Ramaphosa’s predecessors may have cherished.
Internationally, there are regional blocs, including the EU, that understand and support South Africa’s foreign policy agenda, while domestically we continue inane debates about China vs the US
Internationally, there are regional blocs, including the EU, that understand and support South Africa’s foreign policy agenda, while domestically we continue inane debates about China vs the US. The choice is a false and antiquated one.
Like India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria, South Africa can and should choose its national interest above blind loyalty to any “superpower”. Superpowers decline and empires fall — sometimes much faster than we anticipate. There is nothing smart about binding our fortunes to a single global power. What should we do when that power makes a 180º shift in foreign policy, as with Washington’s recent pivot to Russia and away from Ukraine? Must we simply follow suit, quietly and obediently?
However you may feel about the choices of the current administration there is no question that they are wholly different to those of the Zuma era. I speak only of foreign policy adopted by successive governments, not by the ANC. There are a multitude of views, commitments and treasured party-to-party alliances that animate the ANC as a political organisation, but do not find their way into the administration’s non-aligned foreign policy agenda.
We need to sharpen our ability to distinguish party from state. One would think the formation of a grand coalition at the national level would have accomplished this, but no, we must still endure inane conspiracy theories about how Iran funded the government’s ICJ court case. Our justice department wields an annual budget of more than R25bn, and has been perfectly transparent about the budgetary allocations for this case.
In October 2024, the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government launched the middle powers project — a research initiative to “examine how several important countries are navigating a shifting world order substantially marked by US-China competition, and the implications of their choices”.
The project will explore the emerging geopolitical heft of 13 “middle power” states around the world — among them South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, India, Turkey and the UAE. It describes South Africa as “a top economy and democratic pillar of its continent, [which] seeks to capitalise on trade opportunities with both China and the West as it pursues influence in African peace and security and in global forums”.
Another such project is one by Germany’s Körber Stiftung, which runs an annual survey whose aim is to “contribute to a deeper understanding of geopolitical perspectives in countries ... such as Brazil, India and South Africa”.
That these international organisations understand and interpret South Africa’s growing influence better than our domestic discourse does says a lot about how far we have to go. It also illustrates how our low national self-esteem blinds us to the fact that, in 2025, we are actually the citizens of an influential and respected nation.
None of this is to say we are not a country facing significant socioeconomic and political challenges. But we need to learn to distinguish between the challenges and opportunities. And we should ask ourselves why we haven’t yet noticed that these days, the rest of the world holds our country in higher esteem than we at home do.
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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