By Johnathan Paoli
International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola has hit back at United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing Washington of “double standards” in global politics and of dispensing unsolicited democracy lessons it does not consistently uphold.
Rubio, in a recent post, claimed South Africa no longer ranks among the world’s 20 largest economies and blamed the ANC government for economic stagnation, citing regulatory burdens and race-based policies.
He further dismissed South Africa’s presidency of the G20 as an exercise in “spite, division, and radical agendas that have nothing to do with economic growth.”
But Lamola has rejected these assertions, saying Washington’s exclusion of Pretoria from recent G20 engagements undermines the principles of multilateralism and reduces global governance to a tool of domination rather than cooperation.
He stressed that South Africa is a founding member of the G20 and that no member has the unilateral authority to
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