SA’s global moral high ground must be matched at home

I recently spoke to a veteran of SA’s liberation struggle, a leader who understood sovereignty not as a slogan but as a lived condition. He told me that the true test of freedom was simple: whether the general public experienced dignity, security and a tangible stake in the wealth of their country. “States,” he said, “do not lose sovereignty in conferences.

They lose it when they fail their people.” That insight is increasingly relevant to SA’s current predicament. On the global stage, SA has projected moral courage. Its stance on Palestine, its solidarity with Sahelian states reclaiming control over their mineral wealth, and its alignment with Namibia’s insistence on resource sovereignty, position the country as a principled voice against imperial domination.

These positions resonate deeply with the anti-colonial foundations of the liberation movement and enhance SA’s standing among Global South nations. Domestically, the state continues to pursue neoliberal austerity, fiscal contraction, and market-first reforms that weaken public institutions, hollow out state capacity, and entrench inequality. While SA condemns imperial extraction abroad, it tolerates internal economic arrangements that concentrate wealth, privatise risk and socialise hardship.

[paywall]

The result is a state that speaks the language of sovereignty internationally while presiding over structural dependence and social fragility internally. The consequences of this contradiction are not theoretical; they are already visible.

[/paywall]