South Africa has long positioned itself as a nonaligned middle power, committed to multilateralism and punching above its weight.
The frisson created by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos in January continues. There, he argued middle powers can continue performing ritual deference, or they can build genuine strategic autonomy together.
As for the former, he was drawing on Czech intellectual and leader Václav Havel’s 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless”, in which he wrote about the greengrocer in a communist state putting “Workers of the world, unite!” in his window, not out of conviction but out of compliance. Carney argued such a mindset left middle powers vulnerable to hegemonic predatory behaviour, saying middle powers should “act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”.
For Carney, strategic autonomy requires sovereign capabilities in energy, data, finance and security, flexible alliances around shared interests and, most ambitiously, a redesign of multilateral institutions. He said the old order was inconsistently and unjustly applied, particularly against the Global South.
An important backdrop to the speech was the Australia-based Institute for Economics & Peace January 2026 paper “The Great Fragmentation — The Rise of Middle Powers in a Fractured International Order”, which pointed out that the number of middle power nations has nearly doubled since 1991.
It draws a divide between “established” middle powers such as Australia, South Korea, Spain and Canada, which consolidated their status before 2008, and “rising” middle powers such as the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Israel, Indonesia and Turkey, which joined the former group. Rising middle powers exhibit a more independent strategic profile, deriving influence from regional assertion and strategic autonomy rather than a strong alignment with any superpower.
The signs are not great for South Africa, and we could find ourselves not only on the menu but also left out in the cold.
The report identifies “emerging powers”, which include Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Qatar, Norway and Thailand, which occasionally affect regional outcomes and punch above their weight in specific domains but lack consistent capacity for sustained international influence.
It also notes geopolitical fragmentation has not meant fewer interactions between countries, but rather a much denser web of relations within regions.
We have to consider these variables in determining where and how South Africa should position itself. In the broader progressive and left community there is a debate about the future of SA’s foreign policy. On one hand there is the formal ANC and government commitment to long-held internationalist principles and relations, be it within the Non-Aligned Movement, Brics, with social democracies or, especially through the SACP, with socialist countries.
On the other hand there is the view critical of the relations with an imperial Russia or an extractive China or a Hindu-nationalist India, on principle, while some argue very little benefit has accrued to South Africa for its much-vaunted “punching above our weight”.
The government of national unity will increasingly become the site of the battle for SA’s foreign policy, with some parties willing to compromise on our strategic autonomy, pushing for the government to make a deal with the US administration, drop the case of Israeli genocide brought before the International Court of Justice and so on.
The signs are not great for South Africa, and we could find ourselves not only on the menu but also left out in the cold. Already South Africa has been removed from what US President Donald Trump calls the “New G20″, replaced by Kenya at the G7 Summit to be hosted by France, and an increasing number of social democratic states and parties are questioning our continued alignment with Brics countries.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has been desperately trying to claw back SA’s position on the world stage, to recover the moral high ground lost under former president Jacob Zuma’s administration after the Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela presidencies made us a force to be reckoned with.
But South Africa also has to address its institutional capacity, especially in diplomacy, trade negotiations and security. It should also ensure it prioritises relations with its Southern African neighbours and the African continent generally. This may provide the base from which it can project itself as a middle power with heft.
• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.
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