President Cyril Ramaphosa. Picture: X / @CyrilRamaphosa
President Cyril Ramaphosa believes South Africa is obligated to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with oppressed people.
Ramaphosa made the commitment during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) at Cape Town City Hall on Thursday night.
He outlined South Africa’s responsibilities to promote peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ukraine and Israel.
The president opened his Sona with a tribute to the 14 soldiers killed in the DRC, saying they died so that the Congolese people could live in peace.
“They lost their lives not in the pursuit of resources or territory or power. They lost their lives so that the guns on our continent may be forever silenced,” Ramaphosa said.
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He highlighted South Africa’s previous interventions in Lesotho, Burundi, Ivory Coast and South Sudan, adding that “calm and stability” in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province was due to the Southern African Development Community’s peacekeeping mission.
Ramaphosa declared that for Africa to thrive, “we must silence the guns on the continent”, urging diplomacy and a pursuit of the Luanda Process objectives.
A South African delegation will be in Tanzania this weekend for talks between SADC and the East African Community (EAC), which aim to stabilise relations between the parties.
“The presence of South African peacekeepers in the eastern DRC is testament to our continued commitment to the peaceful resolution of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts,” Ramaphosa said.
The president claimed South Africa had participated in several processes to bring peace to Ukraine, saying delegations were responsible for frameworks developed in line with the United Nations (UN) Charter.
“South Africa continues to advance its agenda of cooperation and multilateralism through its membership of the UN, African Union, the Non-Aligned Movement and BRICS group of countries,” explained Ramaphosa.
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On Israel, he stated that South Africa was obliged by the post-World War II Genocide Convention to institute proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“We have always believed that the freedom we won – and the international solidarity from which we benefited – imposes a duty on us to support the struggles of those who continue to experience colonialism and oppression,” the president stated.
South Africa’s friction with the United States may just be getting started after The White House announced sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday.
The ICJ is a UN body that settles disputes against nations, while the ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals.
South Africa in November celebrated the ICC’s issuing of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and two of his ministers, while United States President Donald Trump has just declared the ICC a national security threat.
“I, therefore, determine that any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute protected persons, as defined in section 8(d) of this order, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” Trump said via Executive Order on Thursday.
Another Trump executive order from earlier in the week instituted a review of three prominent UN bodies, but Ramaphosa pledged his allegiance to the multi-national organisation.
“We will continue to push for progress on the reform of the UN Security Council into a more inclusive, more effective body that is able to ensure peace and security,” declared Ramaphosa.
“As humanity confronts unprecedented challenges, we are determined that a reformed and representative United Nations must be at the centre of global affairs,” he said.
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