Peter Draper is a research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).

Prequel

I have spent the last couple of days poring over the pages, both physical and web, of the six major newspapers in South Africa searching in vain for some signs that the South African media establishment is seriously interested in the G20 process. Unfortunately, my search proved fruitless. As was the case with the G8 L’Aquila Summit, although in a more extreme form this time, there was zero South African writing on the topic (for L’Aquila we picked up a couple of editorials). Every single article I came across was sourced from Reuters, Bloomberg or Sapa. There were no editorials.

The closest I came was two pictures: of President Zuma’s first wife (he has four) and hence first lady with Michelle Obama; and Zuma plus his first wife with the Obamas. Besides anodyne captions there was no attempt to put these meetings into the G20 context and hence to profile President Zuma on the international stage. Therefore, I can safely conclude that zero media interest was expressed in President Zuma’s participation in this key forum. Indeed, the G20 was outcompeted in the media space by: the UN General Assembly opening; the Latin America-Africa Summit and President Chavez’s pronouncements on south-south collaboration; and Iran’s missile test. Even these international issues paled into insignificance compared to coverage of domestic political issues, which dominated the local media space. The conclusion I draw is that as the Zuma Administration starts to bed down, in the face of enduring and growing questions about who is really calling the shots on domestic economic policy, so the media’s attention is almost entirely focused on the ensuing power struggles. 

Economic Interests

In my estimation South Africa’s main economic interests in Pittsburgh were the same as those going into the London Summit. As I outlined in my commentary for Soundings Series 1, and briefly summarize here, these consisted of:

1. Ensuring that appropriate fiscal and monetary measures were taken in the major developed countries to underpin growth. This time around the concern was more with sequencing exit strategies, on which there was no SA media coverage.
2. The G20’s regulatory agenda, whilst regarded as important in order to promote global financial stability, was not of first-order importance to South African policy makers. Whilst there is substantial interest in government in having more say in how regulations evolve at the multilateral level, the media did not cover any issues related to this other than through the international media perspectives referred to above.
3. Ensuring continued access to finance, both for South Africa and other African economies, was also important. Yet there was no independent (South African) coverage of this issue.
4. The London Summit outcomes concerning IMF capital injections, ODA flows for poor countries, and increased trade finance funding were very positive and reflected South African policy positions. The major breakthroughs were made there, however, and partly for this reason there was no focus on them in the South African media this time around.

Political Interests

Since there was zero print media coverage of this issue, I have to conclude that “the nation” does not have a perception of the leader’s effectiveness in this forum, and that therefore his performance (whatever that was) does not matter at all in terms of internal ramifications. An alternative conclusion is that the G20 is not of much interest, or, related to this, that it is being well-run and hence does not require investment of media resources into figuring out what is going on from a national interest perspective.

International Interests

My view remains that our participation in this forum is of direct national interest, particularly from the standpoint of building up a global leadership position. Clearly, there is a huge gap between this imperative and raising the importance of this issue in the public space. This also has implications for democratic oversight of the positions our government takes since, unless one is an insider in an overwhelmingly executive driven process, one does not know what positions are being taken.

Having said this, the major change since London is that the BRIC economies seem to have formally constituted themselves as such with their finance ministers issuing a joint statement in London. This has sent some shockwaves through our international relations establishment since it has highlighted was has been obvious to some observers, this one included, for a long time: we are not a BRIC! This will have implications for how other countries interact with us, which could be favourable or not depending on what is being considered and with whom we are interacting.

Global Leadership

The media coverage did not address this dynamic at all, since it was entirely sourced from foreign agencies. It may be that over the next couple of weeks various political actors will wake up to the fact that the G20 has now replaced the G8 with SA as a privileged participant, but the intensifying domestic power struggle will quickly eclipse this if it transpires.