JUSTICE MALALA | Forget the G20 — we have a lot to fix right here at home

There is much that South Africa, Africa and the world are expecting from the fact that South Africa is now chair of the Group of 20 countries. We now lead the world’s richest countries in reflecting on and hopefully confronting some of the world’s most challenging problems.

I personally don’t care much for the G20 as a body. These countries, creators of many of the world’s biggest and most daunting problems, are for me unlikely to be the architects of the solutions to those problems. To my mind, an unrepresentative body like this is mainly a way for rich countries to perpetuate their power. Countries such as Brazil and South Africa are now participants and even take up positions as leaders, as Brazil has been over the past year and South Africa will be in the next 12 months, but the power lies with those who control the purse strings. It is to these countries (the rich ones) that we must ask the hardest questions about climate change, inequality, poverty, and other challenges, must be directed.

So, for me, what matters is not what South Africa can do on the international stage with the G20 chair. Of course, I hope that we can help stop some wars and set a few countries on the path to reconstruction, greater development and growth. I also hope we can achieve some of the other lofty goals set out by President Cyril Ramaphosa in various forums over the past few months. Ramaphosa says that we will use our G20 presidency to focus on advancing inclusive economic growth, food security and artificial intelligence.

“South Africa’s presidency will be the first time an African country has presided over the G20,” Ramaphosa told the G20 summit in Brazil a week ago. “We will use this moment to bring the development priorities of the African continent and the Global South more firmly onto the agenda of the G20.”

This is all hugely admirable. However, I am past caring about many of these global ambitions. My prayers and hopes are local. I hope South Africa confronts our many niggling local problems, fixes them and gets our young people into paid work. I hope that chairing the G20 presidency will put fire under our bushels and make us realise that we must do some serious work to ensure that our young people don’t think of revolution — and to make the world come to South Africa and not think we are a joke.

First, when the G20 comes to visit, the roads must be paved, clean and free of potholes. Yes, yes, I know that we are not working for the G20. But I do hope that our governments, from national to local, will not want G20 leaders to drive out of OR Tambo International Airport and hit that huge pothole as you merge into the road towards Johannesburg. I hope that the towns nearby will be clean and the utilities working. Yes, not for the French and British bureaucrats. For ordinary citizens of this country.

I hope over the next year we will get a grip on crime and will accelerate the green shoots announced by the police minister last week. Not for the G20 visitors, obviously, but so that South Africans can walk home without fear of being mugged, robbed, scammed, drugged and raped.

I hope that we can speak out about the fact that there are indeed millions of illegal immigrants in the US, but that these immigrants are here because we have failed spectacularly in several respects. We have failed to address corruption at the home affairs department for years, meaning that illegal immigrants have managed to buy their way into holding South African identity documents, and are now able to disappear into society without being detected. We have also supported undemocratic and kleptocratic regimes such as Zimbabwe, thus forcing their citizens to flee their collapsing countries and come to South Africa for economic and political reasons.

Then there is our economy. It has stopped growing. The IMF last week said our real GDP growth is projected to reach a mere 1.1% this year and 1.5% in 2025. Shockingly, growth is projected to reach 1.8% by 2030! That means our unemployment rate will not stop rising.

One could go on and on about the municipalities that have become dysfunctional; the water boards that no longer function in places like the Emfuleni; and the many other crippling problems at local level that are seizing up the entire governance system.

Forget the G20. We have a lot to fix right here at home. If the G20 is to be of any meaning to South Africa, it will be if we use our chairmanship of the body to build a better life for our people and for the people of the continent. Otherwise, it will just be yet another talk shop.

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