Miami’s economy thrives precisely because it ignores platitudes like the current G20’s “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability”. The city benefits immensely from being a commercial hub linking North and South America. Why do we ignore how harmful our isolationist biases are?
Might rapidly transitioning from suffering sanctions to being the darlings of the international community have scarred our national psyche, leaving us overly receptive to high-minded ideals and narratives? President Cyril Ramaphosa misspoke when he said, “Through solidarity, we can create an inclusive future that advances the interests of people at the greatest risk of being left behind.”
It is integration, not solidarity, that is required for high-volume upliftment. Ramaphosa’s emphasis on solidarity precedes his pleas for debt relief, while he simultaneously seeks fresh loans and investments. Evidence of global integration fuelling broad upliftment is absent in Johannesburg and abundant in Miami.
The backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) continues to gain momentum in the US. While diversity and inclusion are clearly desirable, equity and equality have been weaponised by politicians eager to exploit underperformers by overemphasising oppression narratives. This victim-focused playbook routinely enriches politicians while entrenching poverty.
The black population with the highest income is black Americans. They benefit from being integrated into an economy with many higher-income whites, who in turn benefit from Asian Americans with even higher incomes. SA has one of the highest income inequalities in the world, but attributing this exclusively to apartheid misses much. The Gini coefficient among black South Africans is actually higher.
The first half of our post-1994 democracy was significantly shaped by Thabo Mbeki’s vision of an African Renaissance. But over the subsequent three decades, Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the world’s extreme poverty has increased from less than a quarter to more than two-thirds. As this region has at most 3% of the world’s discretionary income, Mbeki should have positioned SA as the region’s gateway to the global economy while prioritising job creation through value-added exports. A generation later, the closest we’ve come is the Western Cape’s quite significant job creation through promoting international tourism.
Chanting “sustainability” helps our governing elites negotiate concessionary funding. Thus, the irony that as our hosting of the G20 winds down, Bill Gates acknowledges that climate advocates have been dismissive of how their policies harm the poor.
While the ANC will feign solidarity with anyone who can authorise large investments, the party’s foreign policies and alignments are aggressively anti-Western. The party’s president and secretary-general accuse Western nations of being imperialists, while ANC policies have condemned more than half of the “born free” black South Africans who have left school to perpetual poverty.
SA now has more middle-class and upper-class blacks than whites, but this isn’t saying much as whites are barely 7% of the population. SA’s economic crisis stems from ANC policies substantially benefiting a small portion of the previously disadvantaged, while leaving most working-age South Africans persistently unemployed or underemployed.
An informal job is better than no job, yet few informal job descriptions provide adequate compensation or meaningfully build skills. The ANC’s localisation policies categorically reject what led to humanity’s most impressive feat — the rapid rise of Asia. By travelling to places such as Singapore or Miami, we can imagine how prosperous SA might have been.
US President Donald Trump has sought to renegotiate the US’s relationship with many nations using tariffs to force national leaders to engage for fear of huge job losses. This fails with Ramaphosa, whose localisation policies have already provoked ultra-elevated unemployment. Instead, Trump accusing SA of genocide highlights his opposition to SA’s support for Iran while signalling that we shouldn’t choose enthusiastic supporters of Iran to represent us in Washington.
Geopolitical vibes have been shifting sharply. We must no longer appeal to the better nature of aid providers while aligning with those who would gladly harm them and their children. We should follow the lead of successful countries and gateway cities, like Miami.
• Hagedorn (@shawnhagedorn) is an independent strategy adviser.
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