The South Africa Paradox: Can the Global South Save a System It Didn’t Build ? 

As the 2025 G20 Leaders Summit comes to an end this week with the officials leaving Johannesburg, the official announcement tells only the half of the narrative. The diplomatic rhetoric of “sustainable futures” and “shared goals” hardly covers the tectonic movements taking place under the surface of the global order. This summit is the culmination of a four-year sequence which the “Global South” has held the presidency of global governance covering Indonesia, India, Brazil and finally South Africa. For academics and observers of global politics, it represents a historical turning point.

For a long time, the Group of Twenty (G20) has been referred to as the “steering committee” of our global economy. However, by the end of 2025, it will been dealing with a serious identity issue. Has it evolved into a diplomatic theater for Great Power rivalry or is it still the leading platform for economic cooperation? This piece delves into how the Global South’s presidency reshaped G20 agenda-setting in 2025, why consensus faltered, and what that implies for the future of multilateral governance.

Anatomy of G20 

It is necessary to analyze the G20 in order to figure out what is happening in Johannesburg. It lacks a charter, a treaty and a permanent secretariat in contrast to the EU, NATO and the United Nations. In order to organize policies among Finance Ministers following the Asian Financial Contagion, this informal forum was created in 1999. During the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it was elevated to the leader level ; this decision is linked with avoiding another Great Depression.

Its legitimacy rests on scale: G20 members account for roughly two-thirds of the world’s population, 85% of global GDP and about 75% of international trade, rather than on a treaty shared by its members which include 19 countries, the European Union and most recently the African Union. The G20 served as globalization’s power plant for more than a decade.

The consensus-based G20 of 2008, however, is quite distinct from the G20 of 2025. The barrier separating high politics (security) from low politics (economics) has collapsed. The technical debates on debt and climate are turning into proxy wars for geopolitical domination due to the prolonged dispute in Ukraine, turmoil in the Middle East and the industrial cold war between the United States and China.

The Pretoria Agenda: Representational Legitimacy 

The pursuit of “representational legitimacy” has characterized South Africa’s presidency.The clearest achievement was operationalising the African Union’s permanent seat at the table, moving the AU from topic to participant. Africa is now seated at the table with equal veto power over the consensus rather than only being a topic of discussion on the menu.

This shift has forced a fundamental change in the G20’s DNA, compelling the Johannesburg summit to prioritize issues that arguably matter more to the ‘Rest’ than to the ‘West.’ The first topic on this agenda was the sovereign debt crisis with high rates of interest and a strong dollar persisting through 2025, developing nations are facing a severe solvency crisis, a reality that created intense friction between Western creditors of the Paris Club and China regarding debt restructuring. Beyond financial affairs, South Africa used the forum to make a strong case for the reform of multilateral organizations claiming that it is structurally illegitimate to have a global security architecture that excludes 1.4 billion Africans from formal participation.

The G7 vs. BRICS+ 

The G20 faces “institutional paralysis” despite its ambitious goal. The G7 (the conventional Western countries) and an enlarged, more assertive BRICS+ are the two rival blocs that are rapidly dividing the G20 forum. Consensus is now far harder to achieve as geopolitical fault-lines complicate technical bargaining. The semantic warfare necessitated to create an unified statement on geopolitical disputes drains diplomatic capital that could be used to address transnational dangers such as the next worldwide epidemic or governing artificial intelligence. Although the G20 was intended to close the divide between established and emerging nations, it is instead growing it.

The Role of Middle Powers 

Middle powers have become the crucial glue holding the international system together in this fractured environment. In Johannesburg, nations like Turkey, working with its MIKTA partners(Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea andAustralia) have been crucial mediators.

The scholars studying international relations will find Turkey’s position extremely informative. Ankara bridges the ideological gap as a NATO member with strong relations with the Global South and an outspoken advocate of UN reform (exemplified by the philosophy “The World is Bigger than Five”). In order to keep the G20 from crumbling under the weight of Sino American rivalry in 2025, these middle powers are carrying out the heavy labor.

Conclusion 

The “South Africa Paradox” posits that despite the Global South’s intention to use the G20 to transform the international system, Great Power rivalry has paralyzed it. Critics could write the 2025 G20 as simply “talking shop”. A realist analysis, however, contends that its shortcomings are precisely why it is still vital. The G20 is still the sole forum where the leaders of the United States, China, Russia, India and the EU physically sit together in a world where vetoes have made the UN Security Council impenetrable.

The Global South’s flag successfully landed in the middle of the table under South Africa’s presidency, even though it did not resolve all of the international issues. The question still stands when the presidency rotates once again: Will the world divide into parallel orders or can this forum endure the geopolitical winter? As of right moment, the G20 is the only remaining bridge.

Bibliography

• Common Dreams (2025) The G20 Is a Failure, But Can It Do Better to Correct Past Mistakes? Common Dreams. Available at: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/g20-failures

• The Conversation (2025) South Africa’s G20 presidency: diplomatic victory but a weak final declaration. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/south-africas-g20-presidency-diplomatic-victory-but-a-weak-final-declaration-270476

• World Economic Forum (2025) What is the G20 and why does it matter? World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/11/g20-summit-what-you-need-to-know/