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New Roman',serif;" valign="top"><a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ative-for-the-global-south-htm/p1swpp/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><b>Why
Nonalignment Is an Urgent Imperative for the
Global South</b></a></td>
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valign="top"><b>By Nontobeko Hlela</b>
<div><br>
South Africa and other countries that have <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/en-story-2022-04-1115782/p1swps/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">abstained</a> from
voting against Russia at the United Nations
General Assembly in response to the war in
Ukraine face intense international criticism.
In South Africa, the domestic criticism has
been extraordinarily shrill, and often clearly
racialized. It is frequently assumed that
abstention means that South Africa is in
support of the Russian invasion, and this is
either due to corrupt relations between
Russian and South African elites, or nostalgia
for support given to the anti-apartheid
struggle by the Soviet Union, or both.<br>
<br>
There is seldom any acknowledgment that
nonalignment, in this case refusing to be
aligned with the United States and its allies
or with Russia, can be a principled position,
as well as an astute tactical engagement with
geopolitical realities. As two founding
figures in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM),
Yugoslavia’s then-President Josip Broz Tito
and India’s then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru, said in a <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/stable-26924448/p1swpw/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">joint statement</a>
signed on December 22, 1954, “the policy of
non-alignment with blocs… does not represent
‘neutrality’ or ‘neutralism’; neither does it
represent passivity as is sometimes alleged.
It represents the positive, active and
constructive policy that, as its goal, has
collective peace as the foundation of
collective security.”<br>
<br>
The Global South houses <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/en-global-issues-population/p1swpz/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">more than 80 percent</a>
of the world’s people, yet its countries are
systematically excluded from any
decision-making in the international
organizations that make decisions in the name
of the “international community.” For decades,
countries of the Global South have been
advocating for the United Nations to be
reformed so that it moves away from the
zero-sum game of the cold war mentality that
continues to drive it. Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s
then-foreign minister, said that in June 1969,
Henry Kissinger <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-12-the-price-of-power-376309-/p1swq3/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">told</a> him,
“Nothing important can come from the South.
History has never been
produced in the South. The axis of history
starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over
to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What
happens in the South is of no importance.”<br>
<br>
Jaja Wachuku, then a Nigerian foreign
minister, <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/stable-1035325/p1swq6/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">posed</a> a still
urgent question to the UN’s 18th Session on
September 30, 1963: “Does this Organization
want… [the] African States to be just vocal
Members, with no right to express their views
on any particular matter in important organs
of the United Nations…[?] Are we only going to
continue to be veranda boys?” Global South
countries are still “veranda boys” watching
the adults make the rules and decide on the
path that the world must take. They continue
to be lectured and chided when they do not do
as expected.<br>
<br>
It is time for a revitalized NAM. The NAM will
only succeed if the leaders of the countries
in the Global South put their egos aside,
think strategically on the global scale and
put their considerable human capital, natural
resources and technological ingenuity to
better use. The Global South has an ascendant
China, the second-biggest economy in the
world. It has India, one of the leading
countries in medical care and technological
innovation. Africa is rich with a growing
population and the natural resources that are
needed for the mushrooming AI and cleaner
energy industries. However, these resources
are still extracted for profit to be
accumulated in far-off capitals while Africa
and much of the Global South remain
underdeveloped, with millions still stuck in
the desperation of impoverishment.<br>
<br>
A renewed NAM has real potential if time is
taken to build new institutions and to build
buffers against the economic warfare that the
United States has been waging against
countries like Cuba and Venezuela and is now
unleashing on Russia. Financial autonomy is
critical.<br>
<br>
BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa) has a <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-expansion-mode-301460273-html/p1swq9/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">bank</a>, and for the
16 nations of the <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2022-05-03/p1swqd/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">Southern African
Development Community (SADC)</a> there is
the Development Bank of Southern Africa; yet
the reserves of the countries joined to these
projects are still kept in the United States
or European capitals. This is the time for
leaders within the Global South to wake up and
realize that given the type of economic
warfare that is currently being let loose on a
country like Russia, weaker countries across
the Global South have no meaningful autonomy.<br>
<br>
This is the time to rethink how we conduct
politics, economics and foreign policy when it
is clear that the West can decide to decimate
entire countries. The economic weapons being
built against Russia will be available to be
used against other countries that have the
temerity not to toe Washington’s line.<br>
<br>
BRICS has been disappointing in many respects,
but it has opened some space for Global South
countries—with their many differences in
creed, culture, political and economic
systems—to find a way of working together. The
rejection of intense pressure to bend their
collective knee at the United Nations Security
Council is an encouraging example of the
Global South rejecting the assumption that
they should remain permanent “veranda boys”
(and girls).<br>
<br>
As the United States rapidly escalates its new
cold war against Russia and China, and expects
other countries to fall in line, there is now
an urgent imperative to reject this cold war
mentality of wanting to divide the world along
old acrimonious lines. The Global South should
reject this view and call for the respect of
international law by <i>all</i> countries. It
makes a mockery of the concepts of human
rights and international law when they are
only evoked when it is those countries whom
the West dislikes or disagrees with who break
them.<br>
<br>
Only by standing together and speaking with
one voice can the countries of the Global
South hope to have any influence in
international affairs and not continue to be
just rubber-stampers of the positions of the
West.<br>
<br>
The Non-Aligned Movement needs to be confident
and bold and not seek permission from the
West. NAM leaders need to understand that they
are there to serve their people and protect
their interests and not allow the temptation
of being included in the “big boys club” to
sway their stance on issues. They need to
constantly keep in mind that they have been
kept as “veranda boys” for far too long, and
unless they truly take their destiny into
their hands, they will forever be at the foot
of the table, with their people eating only
the scraps from the wealth accumulated by the
global economy, much of it from the
exploitation of the South.<br>
<br>
<em>This article was produced by the <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2022-05-03/p1swqh/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">Morning Star</a>
and <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2022-05-03/p1swql/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">Globetrotter</a>.<br>
<br>
<b>Nontobeko Hlela</b> was the first
secretary (political) at the High Commission
of South Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. She
currently works as a researcher for the
South African office of <a
href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/south-africa-/p1swqp/1049298320?h=ihhLKW5ckCSDM9uOSo9e_SmlNTFmMLd3hTJscZ-9zVY"
moz-do-not-send="true">Tricontinental:
Institute for Social Research</a>, a
Global South think tank with offices in
Johannesburg, South Africa; São Paulo,
Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and New
Delhi, India.</em></div>
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