ah ah with welcoming worlds apart, the political map of the world as it exists today is in large part the result of the anti colonial struggle of the 20th century. which created many more states without necessarily enchanting them from economical, political dependence. national destiny, sovereign decision making farewell daughter and freedom not to be in store for to you to somebody else's interest. those issues are as relevant today as they're

worth 50 or 60 years ago. what will it take to have them mapped out once and for all? to discuss that, i'm now enjoined by filename sam, boy, executive director of the institute for global dialogue in south africa. it's great to talk to you. thank you very much for your time. thank you. now we're recording this interview on the side lines of day of all day a discussion club. and many russians are delighting enjoying the parallels between the anti colonial struggle of the last century and the this. i think growing anti had you morning sentiment of present days. do you think that's and that's a fair comparison. well, it is, i mean if you look at a number of the countries perhaps who are presented. yeah. i think there is a strong consensus that had gemini, has not worked for our development. i mean, if you look at their freak are you look at african countries and you look at other

regions of the global south. and they have all posed had gemini, because they have borne the brunt of that. and i think there is consensus that the world should be moving towards a multi polo order, not for the purpose of just moving to a multi polo a loader, but also because many countries believe that that will also strengthen the multilateral system. now, what we call had gemini, the americans call that leadership, and they believe that it's a, it's pretty benevolent that this is actually a force for good in the world. sure, there are some mistakes, but the intentions ultimately, at least in the american perception, are good. and what's wrong with that picture of the world? well, what's wrong with it is it actually moves us away from a system, a rules, you know, based system it, well this is actually what they want to hear. this is exactly the distinction i

want to make because we often hear, you know, about international law. but then we also hear about a rules based system. so you ask yourself, what is this rules based system that they speak of when you have a un charter, which actually lays out the principles of international law. and often it moves away from that system and i think what many countries are actually calling for is a return and embrace of the un charter. and i think there is a fear around the world that we have been moving away from that. so what has become interesting and not just now, but in the last few years, is that some of the countries that actually lead the creation of the un system are the very countries that are actually moving away from it, including other multilateral for whether it's the world trade organization, you are seeing that some of the countries that actually played

a proactive role in creating these institutions are moving away from them as other countries within the global south have learned actually work within those particular system. and i think that's a watering trend. i've heard some experts here and i'll dive for argue a target that the new liberal system is a little bit like apartheid. it's a system of entrenched prep, privilege and surance couched in more appealing terms and concepts. but at the core of it is the assumption that you know, certain countries know what's, what's best for all that they know the right path to development. and that only they deserve to be the guardian and the ultimately, the beneficiaries of the global system. it even if we take that concept in, it's sort of positive view. do you think that sustainable given the diversity into

well today it will never be sustainable. i'm in the world is too big, too diverse, too complex for a concentration of power. if you think you can solve global problems by essentially using one particular method and way of thinking, you're deluding yourself. so by moving towards a multi polar order, where you actually embrace diversity of thinking, where you embrace on leadership from different regions of the world who are better able to understand and analyze the challenges that they are facing. you know, you actually give yourself a better chance of solving global problems. but when you concentrate power within, let's say, the united states and western europe, there is no way that you are going to solve very complex global problems. and i think we have seen that very vividly demonstrated during the call with 19 pandemic

when there were lots of calls for, you know, meeting that challenge together. but at the same time, very selfish and behave here on the part of some of the richest countries. and i remember that time, i've interviewed a number of african speakers african thinkers, and they were all saying that african needs to use that example to learn the lesson . and just finally rely on itself 2 years later getting that has already started happening or is the africans i still are talking about that more than doing nothing to. we've learned our lessons. and i think we continue to learn our lessons. i think what the pandemic has helped to do is to accelerate that thinking. so what you are seeing across africa and in other regions of the south, is you are seeing a movement towards the creation of regional value chains. the creation of a greater degree of resilience because the reality is that yes, we are, you know,

coming through this pandemic way, at least the worst parts of the pandemic. but the reality is that in our lifetimes, we will probably face another pen pen demik off, you know, that magnitude. and we're also going to face other external shocks, whether it's conflict or other. and i think africa has to learn from that. because in the pandemic, we were forced to basically wait at the back of the q way for other regions to actually send protective equipment to the continent. and to actually send us things that we have the ability to make ourselves. and so if we are integrated into the global order purely as consumers, it is not sustainable for a continence that is said to double its population by 2050. we need to be able to create regional value chains. and i think you're seeing a movement in that direction, whether it's through the continental free trade area,

whether it is the african union, having much more constructive discussions about to engage external powers in a way that needs africa's own developmental objectives. well, speaking about external crisis and external power is affecting africa. well, being able to agree with me that the latest round of confrontation between russia and the west, especially in the trade and financial sphere, is having a major impact on some of the countries in the global south, particularly when it comes to food, an energy crisis, and 1st of all, i would like to ask you if you have a sense of how those 3rd countries at countries in the global south feel about being subjected to the ramifications of the of the fight in the global north. something that they have absolutely no role in. well, i think especially in africa, what we are trying to move towards is that this building some degree or strategic

autonomy. and it does not work in africa's interest to reduce our external partnerships. so africa is relatively open to external engagement. so in the last few years, you've had a lot of engagement, whether it's through the russia, africa summits, whether it's the china, africa for india, africa, turkey, africa. you've also got a japan, south korea, and the whole range of countries. you and obviously the u. s. and what africans are saying is that we do not want to be forced to choose who to engage with. there's a famous quote from nelson mandela in the early ninety's when you met fidel castro and when you met a toughie and other countries were trying to say, why are you meeting with these leaders? and he said, you will not tell us who our friends are. and i think that is what africans

essentially saying allow us to make independent choices of who to engage with and how to engage with those countries. you mentioned something very interesting and lots of those countries want to engage with africa. and i assume they also bring with them very different styles of communication and you know, sustaining those relationships in what way would africa like to communicate with its partners? because i think it's not only about whom you have relationship with, but what kind of relationship you have with, with your allies. so in africa and the focus is and has to be very much on development. and we have a continent that is said to double its population by 2050, live over 2000000000 africans. and we know that pretty much close to 70 percent of the population is under the age of 30. so we're very young population with

a lot of expectations and so development has to be at the forefront of our engagement with international stakeholders. and so what we have at the moment we have obviously a through the african union agenda 2063 agenda 2063 has certain strategic projects which should cause catalytic projects that it ones to engage the rest of the world in supporting building infrastructure, integrated infrastructure, you see the legacy of colonialism is that infrastructure was built for from the point of extraction, of mineral resources to the ports. so it was never an integrated infrastructure. and i think what africans, i essentially saying today to the outside world is work with us. but to work with us on the basis of our own priorities. and of course, that will not always be the case. but the object to from the african side is

certainly to get these countries to support existing african initiatives. you mentioned the legacy of colonialism and a few months ago i had a chance to interview a former prime minister of pakistan, him on hand before he was fe, is sort of pushed out of power. and he said one very interesting thing that one of the consequences of colonialism is that you stop appreciating yourself or who you are. you are always sort of psychologically inferior to somebody else. and you tend to doubt that you have this a mental and psychological capacity to build your own future. do you think africa is fully over at that right now, after you know, many decades of what i think was enforced dependence? because as you mentioned, many of the projects that were supposedly intended to help africa actually made it a dependent. then we're exploitative of, of your land. and you know, the important thing there is that a person like steve vehicle. i mentioned that the part most powerful weapon in the

hands of the colonizer is the mind of the colonized. and so if africans and other parts of the world are to move beyond, you know, the scars of oppression and the scars of colonialism. importantly, what it begins with is, how are we educating, you know, the next generations to become more self aware to become more assertive to become more confident, you know, in themselves. it is not a rejection of the other. so it is not a rejection offer external education or, or external institutions, but it is in the formation of the self and a formation of your history of your culture. and i think young people are expressing that in africa through different a ways using modern technology. but ultimately expressing themselves as africans. and i think we're going to see that expand, you know, with time to

a point where it makes it a point that even the political leadership in africa knows that they have to assert african values, african standards, african priorities, when they engage with the rest of the world ok, well we have to take a very short break right now, but we will be back in just a few moments stationed. ah ha. 0, one main thing is important for knox ism internationally speaking to that is that nation's thoughts are allowed to do anything. all the mazda races, the reason you us, hey jim, it is so dangerous. is it done by the sovereignty of all the country wars

of business and businesses? good. and that is the reality of what we are facing, which is fashion with . mm hm. welcome back to will to partner with the line in sample executive director of the institute of local dialogue and south africa. is there assembly before the break? you mentioned on this need to be self affirmative and to have enough stamina to know what your interest? i am to defend them and i think we would all agree with that,

that of hero spirit. but it, it usually comes at a cost. and i remember, you know, after the collapse of the soviet union when russia was very poor and very vulnerable in terms of its own self perception that we were like in the west. but nowadays, once we started defending what is important for us, our national interests, we are facing enormous pressure from the west. the same happens. you mentioned mom, i get out here. i remember libya both before the the intervention of major and after which essentially turned at fairly well developed african country into one large slave market right now. so when you talk about the need for africa to stand up for itself, are you aware of the potential ramifications and conflicts that it may bring to your land? no, definitely. and i think perhaps in the past there was an element of naive it with, you know, some of the political leadership within the continent. and i think if you are going

to become more assertive, then you do have to build a stronger material base because we have to understand that, i mean, within the african context, it works to the benefit of others to keep africa. you know, at a low level of development, because the moment that african countries actually assert themselves develop, regulates, you know, the actions of multinational corporation are all that. well, they really matter rather than go to and instead of shipping those resources for very cheap, they will actually compel external companies to produce closer to their markets. so in order to do that, i think we do not have to be naive and just assert house sells rhetorically. but we have to actually build a power base, build a material base for that assertiveness. and that means getting our economies rights . that means actually governing our society in

a way that benefits or societies. and i think that is something that the new generation of political leadership in africa has to do. and i think it also includes, in, you know, being very mindful of what your partner's want and being able to, you know, play their interest to your advantage. you mentioned before that there lots and lots of various african for are, you know, american chinese, russia and turkey, japanese, et cetera. and countries offer very different developmental models, particularly china, which is always say, criticize in the west for the way does business in africa. i know you've studied professionally and academically, give us a brief sense of how they are different, let's say the, the western way of reaching out to africa and the chinese way of doing that. so you mentioned, for instance, earlier about, you know, how post colonial societies at times have

a sense of even inferiority. but the, the, the inverse is also true in terms of former colonial powers who are not able to shake their own sense of superiority. and so what i think is quite unique that say with the chinese model is that we cannot replicate the chinese model, but we can certainly learn certain things. and one of the things we can learn is that it is based on their own and dudgeon as development systems. so china peaks and choose what it wants to use from the west and from other regions of the world. but it's model of development is very much founded on its own history, its own culture. and i think that is something that we can take. we need to interrogate whether all political systems, whether our laws,

whether our ways of doing business or actually aligned to our interests. we can also learn that you need political will to actually sustain, you know, your development model as different countries. because certainly when china began opening up and reforming, many in the west looked at it and said they never going to achieve these development plans. they were ridiculed, and i think we have to be prepared to accept also that. now i also want to ask you about the russian, our role in africa. at this point of time rush is mostly involved in the mining sector and the security sector, both of which are very lucrative and very sensitive. and i would also add, very secretive, given that there is very little public oversight in those sectors. and i want to ask you directly, what kind of a player is russia in africa? is it being honest to, to the people and to the land?

well, one of the things that obviously because of the soviet history, it has that historical legacy. in fact, many africans would have been asking themselves why russia and engage less. but of course, we understand the challenges that it had, you know, in the early ninety's. and so forth. so in that sense, i think russia, within africa, yes, is engaged in the security sake and the mining sector and the energy sector. now these obviously important sectors because when we talk about security, we talking about many countries that are still struggling to actually assert a degree of sovereignty over their territory. so obviously it provides opportunities for security, open corporation energy. also energy security is a big challenge within africa. so that provides opportunities for russia and of course, mining rich continent. but another area that i think we do not speak about enough

is the agricultural sector i'm in russia is an agricultural power. and when we are talking about issues of food security within africa, we do have arable land, quite a lot of arable land, but we do not produce enough of our own food to become self sufficient. and i think this opens an opportunity for russia to actually not only trade with africa, but to work with african stakeholders to actually increase their own output. so if you combine mining and agriculture, you can actually be mining phosphorus. you can actually be making fertilizers and improve, moving, actually africa's on agricultural approaches. so there's a lot of opportunity there to not only focus on those traditional sector, but in order for those opportunities to be realized. and i think what will be required is not only russian political and economic well,

but also the readiness of local partners to deal with russia despite all the potential ramifications. plus, there are also associated security risk because investments in agriculture are low margin and long term d think and africa has enough to offer at this point. and remember that we also dealing in a context where the u. s. has particular legislation that is supposed to punish countries that are actually increasing their corporation with regime and if it's for the purpose of providing food for that. exactly. and i think that is why we have to be a search and so in a blink and came to south africa recently. and he was told, you know, various sort of men of by saw the african minister of foreign affairs that we will not accept being dictated to by other countries. and i think what african needs is

not all but a few strong regional countries that are going to assert africa's interest within the world. but that assertion has to be constant. and that gives some umbrella of protection for other countries to actually engage with whomever they want to. now, speaking about this potential green revolution in africa, grandeur evolution is such a low the term because in the united states, it was done under this logo, now feeding the people. but it also led to a substantial decrease in biodiversity. and overall, the benefits of that kind of agriculture are very questionable. i know that this is an issue in south africa as well because when santa is very much present there. when you talk about agricultural corporation, what do you have in mind? and do you think actually that the united states and russia could be, could make africa battle ground for that very different style of agriculture and

approaching to the approach to nature? no, and i think this is where we need to actually define the very clearly the model that we want to actually take. because part of the challenge in african cultural space is that you have countries that are in the agricultural space but are largely growing cash crops for the market. now some of these cash crops are not trout resistance and are not actually, well, a, not really the type of crops that you would want to put all your resources into. i mean, you take an example like southern africa where we have indigenous crops in which we are not really growing in sufficient numbers that we should be crops that are drug resistance. so we need a balance between cash crops for the market and actually food crops, you know, to feed our populations crops that are actually strong. and that can out live,

you know, certain drug conditions. and i think that's what we need to do. but also what we need to do is learn from the bad lessons that we have seen in other parts of the world. so you can't just have mano, you know, culture and just, you know, growing one particular type of credit for the market. that's where we need a bit of diversity, but also we need smaller scale farming and actually to be able to grow crops closer to the communities that are going to be consuming those crops. it can be that, you know, it's cheaper to bring in chickens from the united states than it is to actually have your own a poultry industries and can, within the capitalist, this link, which leads me, i guess, to my final question because the new south african government is it is an object of destination here in russia because we have long abandoned any marxist or socialist

ideas. and i think that also has something to do with our, with our own sounds, a full number ability or defeat if you want the ideological to fit in the past. but we are seeing from the south african government that it's not a team it to explore some of those ideas in practice and to be able to consider, for example, the long term consequences of agricultural policy, which you cannot do in, within the capital. a system where you only consider the profits here you're talking about the impact on the community, the impact on, on the environment. how do you see social is more and marks is more, you know, this new form of governance that's more oriented towards a society play out in the 21st century can compared to, let's say, the 20th century. i'm in south africa. again, that's majority rule at the time when you're liberalism was basically the only ideology in town. but i think what you still have in south africa, you still have

a desire, especially from within members. some members of the stuff, the governing party to explore ideas like socialism and to see how you can actually bring it about in reality. now, of course it's contested space. i mean, the governing party in south africa calls and sofa broad church. you have can picture this, you have marks this, you have, you know, nationalists, you have a number of, of, of ideologies that play, which sometimes works in our favor and sometimes not. and, but i do think, you know, it's still fertile ground to explore certain ideas, rather than purely adopting a new or liberal approach to dana crossing content for a given in the ideological peer section. well, it's been a fascinating conversation. thank you very much for that. thank you, and thank you for watching hope to see her again on the wells apart. ah,

a ah, who is the aggressor today? i'm authorizing additional strong sanctions. today russia is the country with the most sanctions imposed against it. and number those constantly growing. a list of course, it's becoming bill in your senior mostly mine or wish you were banding all imports of russian oil and gas new g i. g,

with the letter from, you know, we're pretty good regarding joe, by imposing these sanctions on russia has destroyed the american economy. so there's your boomerang. ah, we have place to guarantee security. if you create a tax, these vessels, we will be to blame. lot of merit and accuses key of opposing a threat to that black sea weak car door. as moscow expresses concerns over ukraine, abusing the un brokered weak deal for military attacks. also ad on the program today, south africa as president lashes out the u. s. embassy for causing panic about a terrorist attack potential. one that never occurred in china warns all of a potential arms re.