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G20 will platform fractured SA politics plus friction-riddled global ideologies As diplomatic as any world leader, Ramaphosa spoke to Trump last week and offered him a full state visit next November, adding: We might find that there is a lot of competition among our golf courses on where President Trump and possibly myself can go and play golf and talk about global matters. Since Trump is a strong proponent of Israel's genocide in Gaza, even calling his predecessor, Joe Biden, a "bad Palestinian" during a debate, Ramaphosa's Ambassador to the United States Ebrahim Rasool let slip in an interview this week: "We need to put away the [Palestine-solidarity] megaphone now. And the president's words were, it is now sub judice...I understand the need to completely recalibrate...that's the art of the deal. It is about framing the messages in particular ways that make South Africa an ally [of Trump]." There is always a talk-left walk-right character to G20 work, especially declarations. As Ramaphosa himself said at the Rio de Janeiro summit last month, the G20 "must be capable of combating the use of hunger as a weapon of war, as we are now seeing in some parts of the world, including in Gaza and Sudan". Yet, at the same moment, his presidency was using starvation as a 'smoke-'em-out' tactic against thousands of underground informal-sector miners in Stilfontein. Ideologies of power, in friction Though declarations are generally bland and non-controversial, the G20 itself can be a maelstrom of political posturing. Johannesburg's hosting will test everyone's BS-detectors when at least a half-dozen ideologies clash. There will be three competing traditions within the G7 powers, for example: 1. 'Paleo-conservative' – nativist, protectionist, isolationist, xenophobic, misogynist, racist, homophobic, culture warriors – which harks back to the dinosaur age. In terms of personalities, this ideology is represented best by Trump and by rightwing opposition figures Marine Le Pen in France (at a time of current and anticipated fluidity in Paris palace politics) and Nigel Farage in Britain (where the Brexit and nationalist traditions continue). As for Trump's natural allies in the bloc, he will cohere with current Argentine leader Javier Milei (anticipated to host the G20 in 2027). Trump would be most friendly with South Korea's hard-rightwing leader Yoon Seok-Yeol – who failed to coup his own government this week due to popular opposition – and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro (who hosted the BRICS in 2019, reducing it to impotence). 2. 'Neo-conservativism' is often represented by a liberal, expansionist imperialism, fuelled by military-industrial complex corporate contributions to politicians – but it is also pro-'democracy' in the sense of imposing that 'system' by the barrel of a gun, as did the George W. Bush regime in the Middle East. Current neocons include outgoing US Secretary of State Tony Blinken, former Trump national security advisor John Bolton and, more broadly, the so-called 'Blob' surrounding the State Department, Pentagon and allied think tanks. 3. The 'neo-liberal' approach was exemplified by US president Barack Obama (2009-2016) and the technocrats at the EU, IMF, World Bank and WTO – whose leaders attend G20 summits – with a philosophy based on free-market, big-corporate, financialised, multi-cultural – but assimilationist. There is a great deal of overlap, with Trump's appointees carrying forward not just the 'Make America Great Again' refrain in an inward-looking manner, but also blatant proponents of warfare. And the next German government – to be elected in February – is likely to be centre-right in character, mixing neo-cons and neo-libs, fearful of the paleo-con neo-Nazi threat, which has gained momentum in recent elections there. Britain's neoliberal Labour Party is already suffering a decline in popularity due to Keir Starmer's tough budget cuts. Ideologies of global opposition The other three ideologies observable at the global scale are just as tormented: 4. The 'social democratic' tradition always stresses stronger domestic social welfare, industrial and environmental policies cognisant of the climate crisis, and peace. Genuine social democrats are best represented not only by last month's G20 host, Brazil's Lula Igancio da Silva, but by three of today's most popular politicians – albeit never achieving formal power – in France, Britain and the US: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. After the 1940s-1970s peak of this ideology, social-democratic power has been achieved as a popular ideology during the two Latin American 'Pink Tide' waves: initially in Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador, and today mainly in Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico (of which only the first and last are in the G20). 5. Many of the latter countries aim to support a so-called 'multipolar' ideology against the unipolar West, with an approach that is not necessarily anti-imperialist – often the BRICS operate as sub-imperial forces in global capitalism, deeply implicated in global value chains based on high-CO2 extractive and smelting industries like our own – but expresses sometimes strong disagreements with Western neo-colonialism. While multipolar advocates' democratic potential is spoiled by the dominance of quasi-dictatorial leaderships – in G20 member states like China, Russia, India, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia – nostalgia for the 1950s-1970s era of a strong Non-Aligned Movement and a recent revival of New International Economic Order demands keep this 'Third Worldist' ideology alive. 6. Finally, an internationalist 'New Left' set of solidarity movements have always played a big part, demanding and sometimes winning campaigns based on the 'globalisation of people and deglobalisation of capital'. They were prominent in early-2000s Global Justice Movement struggles, such as medicines as global public goods (won then against AIDS, but lost in 2022 for Covid vaccines). In the same broad family are found a long-standing labour left, feminists, the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising, anti-austerity movements (most recently GenZ in Kenya), Palestine solidarity and climate justice. There are, in South Africa, many manifestations of all six, though paleo-cons are thin on the ground and the National Endowment for Democracy conference in Sandton late last month revealed fracturing between insiders from the liberal and social democratic traditions, against anti-US activists from multipolar and New Left traditions, thereby causing ruptures in the Congress of SA Trade Unions and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation. And Ramaphosa knows these fault lines well, and possesses strong divide-and-conquer capacities, just as were evident last month in Rio. In a planning meeting this week, according to Jenny Ricks, General Secretary of Fight Inequality Alliance: "President Lula requested that movements and unions join the G20 'Social20’ – not the Peoples' Summit – in the context of far-right fascism in Brazil. He wanted a more united thrust. A number of social and labour movements moved out of the People's Summit into the S20, and that caused enormous tension." South Africans know well the fragmentation of politics due to ideological divergences, and 2024 was a test of whether the centre could hold within the country's centre-right elites. It has held so far, within a GNU as prone to splintering as the 1994-1996 model. But at the global scale, given that G20 leaders' own political delegimitisation continues in many member countries, you would be very brave indeed to predict that a bloc of the most powerful, venal rulers (like Trump) can today even properly debate – much less deliver – Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability. - Patrick Bond is a distinguished professor and Director of the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Change. https://www.news24.com/news24/Opinions/FridayBriefing/patrick-bond-g20-will-platform-fractured-sa-politics-plus-friction-riddled-global-ideologies-20241205 Back |
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