ROAD TO 2024: The tide is turning for President Cyril Ramaphosa who has faced heavy criticism over the past five years, argues Zukile Majova.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is taking heavy fire at home where 6,200 people are murdered every quarter, 70% of young people are unemployed, power has been cut for over 300 days a year and economic growth is now below 1%.
But on the international front, Ramaphosa is basking in the glory of the performance of South Africa’s top-drawer legal team, which presented the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice at The Hague this week.
Andrew Feinstein, a Jewish South African and former ANC MP, said Ramaphosa’s strength is foreign affairs and conflict resolution.
“People around the world have been so impressed not only by the written inputs but by the verbal presentation [of South Africa’s legal team]. The professionalism of South Africa’s presentation was just brilliant.”
The brilliance of SA’s presentation was made even more apparent by the unpreparedness of Israel’s main lawyer, who kept making excuses about his papers not being in the correct sequence.
“They are unable to say this fact is wrong or that fact is wrong, what they are relying on is a technicality that the court will dismiss the whole case based on jurisdiction and that South Africa didn’t give Israel sufficient opportunity to communicate before the filing was made.
“And that is an incredibly weak argument,” said Feinstein.
South Africa has now put in front of the world the appalling slaughter that is happening day after day in Gaza.
“The most important fact is simply the reality that 247 people are being killed every day in Gaza, 48 of whom are women and 117 of whom are children,” said Feinstein.
“And if this is self-defence, how do you justify killing almost 9,000 children in two months?”
In the past year, Ramaphosa has presented South Africa to the world as once again a moral voice of the poor and oppressed communities around the world.
He seems to honestly believe that South Africa’s solution of resolving conflicts through negotiation could be the solution to many troublespots around the world.
In the last year, Ramaphosa led a delegation of African leaders to Russia and Ukraine to begin a process that could lead to the war between the two countries being resolved through dialogue.
Ramaphosa, who played a leading role in South Africa’s negotiated settlement, is also credited with playing a prominent role in the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s.
While South Africa is economically a junior partner in the Brics group of nations (Brazil, India, Russia, China, South Africa), its standing on global affairs elevates it to one of the most important voices of the so-called global south.
Pictured above: Cyril Ramaphosa.
Image source: X
