Country needs to speak out over growing global inequality

THE ANC has always found it necessary to assess the global balance of forces in order to recount the progress the world is making with each administration and the role we as a country are playing in that progress.

The world has done much and changed significantly since 2009.

As part of the global community we were able to co-ordinate our response to the global economic crisis and return global economy to growth.

South Africa’s role for example through strong financial regulations and its role in the global efforts to reboot recovery ensured that in less than five years some growth could be witnessed in certain parts of the world, and we are happy today the world is largely on the positive trajectory.

It has, however, not all been wonderful. An integrated world means once something happens in one country, people are free and quick to move to another country to find refuge.

As one of the more stable and prosperous countries, we have experienced a shift in our demographics that reflects Africans from all over the continent making their home on our shores.

They enrich us, they make us better. But their journey is not always smooth. Europe has also experienced a flood of refuges looking for a new home and Europe has found itself at a crossroads.

The opening of our world has been aided more so by the introduction of social media platforms, which have helped connect our citizens, but also put others at risk of predators and terrorists. There has been a rise of new global threats, ISIS, Boko Haram and other radicalised organisations.

What continues to ache the world, however, is growing inequality.

It is this inequality that results in the birth of fundamentalists and extremists, politics of sects and tribes, aggressive nationalism, crude populism, sometimes from the far left sometimes from the far right, which seeks to restore what they may consider a better time or better age.

There is, however, reason to believe that the world today is safer and more prosperous than it has been since the Second World War. Over the last 20 years the number of people living in absolute poverty has been cut from 40% to under 10%. The world, with more emphasis on Africa, largely embraces the need for communities to choose their own leaders. The number of so-called democracies has nearly doubled in the last 25 years. Social media has given platforms to all citizens to express themselves and that has raised expectations on all of us who are in pubic office.

However small our contribution we also take pride in having been the only country outside Cuba and the US where the presidents of both countries met under the enabling spirit of Madiba, which led to the much-improved relations between the two countries.

We have been a strong proponent of lowering global carbon emissions and our presence at the COP17 and thereafter has shifted the global view on where Africa stands with regard to carbon emissions. We have been very clear that as one of the poorer continents, the consequences of climate change hit us the hardest. These achievements must help us summon the courage to achieve even more global victories.

Global capital is too often unaccountable. Nearly 8 trillion dollars stashed away in tax havens in a shadow banking system that grows beyond the reach of effective oversight. A world in which 1% of the global community controls as much wealth as the other 99% will never be stable.

People today, thanks to technology, are able to see just how the 1% lives. We see growth of the middle class held back by corruption and underinvestment. We need to stop this imbalance.

South Africa, as one of the countries that stands up for democracy, for equality, for citizen participation, needs to speak out forcefully.