G20 Summit proved that the changing world is leaving the US behind
Opinion
Family Photo of G20 heads of state and governments, invited leaders and heads of international organisations during the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg.
Image: GCIS
THE US government finally received a G20 Presidency handover at a low-key event in the South African capital, Pretoria. It was no less than Washington deserved.
The US President Donald Trump administration boycotted the recent G20 Leaders Summit, the first to be held on the African continent.
The boycott was premised on a litany of blatant lies about a state-orchestrated genocide of the minority white Afrikaner community. Despite the South African government’s vehement protestations and strenuous efforts to set the record straight, the Trump administration has relentlessly maintained its baseless antagonism toward Pretoria.
For the bulk majority who know the truth about post-apartheid South Africa’s transitional and transformational trajectory, they would tell Trump and anyone who cares to listen that, despite an avalanche of challenges, the future remains pregnant with promise.
International relations observers had opined that Washington’s resolve to take umbrage with Pretoria follows the decision by the South African government to charge the Israeli government with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague.
South Africa dared the US and Western hegemony by confronting the evil deeds perpetrated by Israel’s Knesset and the country’s notoriously heartless military in Gaza, where officially more than 70 000 people have been killed since October 2023, and thousands remain trapped under heaps of rubble, presumed dead.
The complicity of the US and the West in the annihilation of Gazans had never been lost on South Africa. The Ramaphosa administration dared the mighty and powerful by becoming a voice for the voiceless Palestinians who for donkey’s decades have been fighting to establish their own state in accordance with international law.
The Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination has been waged for too many decades, a century. Millions have perished along the way. Palestinian territories continue to be taken by force amid a merciless wave of State-sanctioned land-grab campaign by the Israeli settlers.
Despite international condemnation of the erection of large swaths of illegal settlements on the occupied Palestinian land, the hard-line Israeli government under belligerent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps sanctioning more annexation of Palestinian territories.
The Israelis oppress Palestinians without fear of any reprisal. Impunity is their privilege, their stock in trade. Attempts at the UN Security Council (UNSC) to rein in the Jewish state’s excesses are doomed to fail at all material times. The reason is not hard to find.
Once again, Washington is the chief provider of diplomatic cover for the state of Israel. As a permanent member of the UNSC, the US possesses a veto power that any US administration occupying the White House at any given time — be they Democrats or Republicans — uses that veto to thwart any punitive resolution against Israel’s perpetual reign of terror. It is a terrible state of affairs.
Palestinians have known no peace for a period lasting a century, defending the land of their forebears, as well as their inalienable right to statehood. In 1936-1939, the struggle for self-determination by the Palestinians resulted in what is known as the “Arab Revolt”, which was sparked by growing discontent with British rule and increasing Jewish occupation of Palestinian land. The British suppressed the revolt forcefully!
During the 1947-1949 Nakba, the UN sought to resolve the conflict between the Jews and Palestinians by partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, a move accepted by the Jewish leaders and rejected by Arab leaders. The declaration of Israeli independence in 1948 triggered the Arab-Israeli War, one of the many throughout various intervals of contemporary history.
With the support of the West, Israelis claimed victory in the war, resulting in the displacement of some 750 000 Palestinians in what has come to be known as the Nakba. Since October 2023, Israel has forcibly displaced virtually the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza alone, starved, killed, maimed and arbitrarily detained scores of them. Now, with the support of President Trump, the entire Gaza Strip has been obliterated, and survivors coerced into fleeing to neighbouring states never to return to their homeland.
The well-documented Six-Day War of 1967 further resulted in a more decisive Israeli victory that saw the Jewish state capture the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), as well as the Golan Heights in neighbouring Syria.
Throughout a heinous passage of history, international diplomacy has failed the Palestinians. The dominance of the Global North in the UN as well as the international governance system has also meant that the West has set the global agenda and decided on outcomes, including on behalf of the many former colonies at the height of European imperialism.
Although many countries have since the advent of the 1960s gained independence and UN membership, the archaic structures of the UN system, such as the Security Council, have remained to favour the dominance of the Global North.
Now of late, steadily at least, the Majority World — better-known as the Global South — have begun to speak out louder and louder on issues that require their audible voices. The recent G20 Leaders Summit, a hugely successful spectacle that excluded the missing elephant out of the room that was the US, has shown the international community that change has come. And, in its wake, change is leaving the US reeling.
Several Western nations, such as Canada, South Korea, Japan and the rest of Europe, have not escaped Trump’s indiscriminate tariffs. This rise in unilateralism has caused many nations to seek new friendships and create fresh alliances away from the spectre of US domination.
The blatant refusal of South Africa to hand over the G20 Presidency to a junior US embassy staffer was a rare example of David standing up to Goliath. Methinks this rapidly changing international world order will never be the same. It is irreversible.
The international trade through the use of the US dollar is in sharp decline. BRICS’ deliberate de-dollarisation move has challenged the US economic hegemony like never before. As the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, noted: “This G20 meeting takes place in a very different world.”
International trade is increasingly taking place through the use of the national currencies of trading partners. The status of the US as the world’s largest economy is under fierce challenge and threat by the rising Dragon that is China, the epicentre of the rising Global South.
The Empire that was once the mighty US are unravelling. As is the case with everything, there is what is called the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
* Abbey Makoe is Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Global South Media Network (gsmn.co.za). Views expressed are wholly personal.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.