Now SA must help reform the UN

A FEW days ago we woke up to the ecstatic news that our country, South Africa, has been accepted into the United Nations Security Council.

While it’s extremely tempting to celebrate on our election to the Security Council because of the opportunities this milestone affords us a nation, we need to reflect on exactly what this opportunity presents for us as South Africans.

For the record, the UN was formed after World War II, when the community of nations noticed the need for a single global authority to negotiate global affairs among countries.

This formation would thus help guarantee global peace, something which seems almost impossible to date.

However, from my tiny experience at that level of participation, the foundation had a fundamental structural defect because only five powerful countries – US, Britain, France, Russia and China – were given veto powers.

This means that if the UN took a resolution on any matter, any of these five countries could nullify that resolution using its veto powers. It also means, that for any resolution to be carried out, the five countries, that are permanent members of the Security Council, must agree.

Funnily enough, this rarely happens.

This renders the UN almost powerless, and to some extent, useless.

However, as the youth of South Africa, we should not allow the political correctness of the election to suppress the truth.

The truth is that the UN needs to be reformed, and not just to allow presumably progressive countries such as South Africa to have their two years of eventual or gradual glory as members of the Security Council.

While the UN is a legitimate, respectable world body, it has no real powers to carry out its well-debated resolutions. That is why countries such as America and Britain act outside the UN box and advance their interests under the guise of pursuing world peace.

The reality is, the UN in its current form poses a strong threat to world peace.

There is no doubt that the world requires a body like the UN, but it should be reformed so that there is some democracy and fairness in the UN assembly.

The first move to introduce democracy in the UN Assembly would be to remove the veto powers of the permanent members of the Security Council.

Until that is done, South Africa’s participation in the Security Council would be lending legitimacy to crimes that are committed by imperialists and their allies.