Finnish President Sauli Niinistö’s state visit was a landmark event. As President Cyril Ramaphosa noted, Finland has “special relations” with SA.
Like South Africans and many people of the world, the people of Finland have known and supported the paths to peace through dialogue and understanding. They know solidarity in all its shapes and forms with all its limitations and challenges.
Niinistö relayed a concern to Ramaphosa: “You have seen many wars here in Africa, and we too now understand how wars affect nearby states and people.” These remarks were undoubtedly informed by the immediate experience of conflict in Finland’s backyard. Just 20 days earlier the Nordic nation had deposited its instrument of accession to join Nato.
A day before the state visit another landmark shift had happened. Mega miner Sibanye-Stillwater told the market the Finnish state-owned holdings company for mining assets, Finnish Minerals Group, had increased its holding in the Keliber project from 14% to 20%. Sibanye owns much of the rest.
The project is the first European producer of battery grade lithium hydroxide, a processed form of lithium used in high-value batteries for electric vehicles.
Yet the link between the Finnish state visit and the shift in ownership of one of Sibanye’s most important assets outside SA was overshadowed by the more salacious news of Neal Froneman’s “pay cut”.
The Finnish state’s subscription for extra shares in a venture largely owned by Sibanye — and, via the Public Investment Corporation’s (PIC) 15.8%, SA public servants — is the stuff I would have loved to have seen in a lively discussion or an agitprop column. Maybe it was there and I missed it.
For a few reasons, the visit and some of Niinistö’s remarks highlighted features of our environment we may want to ponder. For example, the non-aligned consensus, of which SA is a notable part, seems to be gathering bedfellows in unlikely places. Not all in Europe are as unequivocal in their views on how peace can be secured in Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron has asked whether it is in the interests of Europe to “accelerate a crisis in Taiwan”, implying that Europe will exercise caution before following Washington towards the ruins of Donbas or in response to the military exercises in the western Pacific.
Macron’s remarks suggest there might be European voices that are not interested in a uni or bipolar world that places many of their own people and national interests at risk. Furthermore, support for the Ukrainian side has been plagued with contradictions.
The recent import ban on certain foodstuffs from Ukraine as Polish, Hungarian and Slovakian farmers saw their margins shaved by surplus produce landing on their shores, displayed fissures in the pan-European “fort” behind Ukraine.
That such a consensus has at its centre a recognition that the national interest or concern becomes a critical consideration in any such multilateral engagement as the rules become greyer, is a notable post-1989 shift.
The room for things like industrial policy and the relaxation of intellectual property restrictions widens market opportunity and the scope for state action, while on the other end green restrictions such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism or other non-tariff barriers may narrow trade flows between parts of the developing and developed worlds.
Somewhere in there will also be contestation and competition over whether political economies enable access to the minerals that underlie the technological changes associated with the path to net zero.
Where lithium comes from in future, be it Bolivia or Zimbabwe, may create new spheres of conflict, and hopefully this time around there will be meaningful co-operation and change. With a history in lithium research (remember the Zebra battery?), neighbourly proximity to Africa’s largest lithium producer and a diversified and integrated auto-assembly ecosystem for export, SA may provide catalytic opportunity for a different accumulation path for Southern Africa in the just transition.
To seize it is an entirely different matter.
• Cawe is chief commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission. He writes in his personal capacity.
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