G20 Summit delivered real political mileage for SA

SIGNIFICANT MOMENT FOR GLOBAL SOUTH

- CLLR NKOSENHLE MADLALA

AS THE Ethiopian adage goes: When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion. Indeed, this past weekend, South Africa, a nation of many historic firsts, once again proved to the world that strength is not measured by size alone, but by vision, resilience, and unity.

Even as detractors sought - by hook and by crook - to derail us from a mission that we always knew was not beyond our reach, we soldiered on.

It is now for the scribes of history to record that the 2025 Group of 20 Summit was never just another diplomatic spectacle, but an ideological reckoning.

For the first time since the G20's formation, the world's premier economic forum convened on African soil not as a token gesture, but as a decisive shift in who sets the tone, who frames the crisis, and who dares to imagine an alternative global order.

Under South Africa's presidency, the summit made clear that Africa is no longer content with being a spectator to decisions that define its destiny.

The Leaders' Declaration deliberately anchored itself in the spirit of Ubuntu, asserting a collective global responsibility rooted in solidarity, equality, and sustainability, and explicitly rejecting the isolationism and transactional politics that have dominated Western diplomacy for decades. This was not rhetorical flourish; it was ideological positioning.