President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday that South Africa benefited from a wave of international solidarity in the battle to end apartheid and usher in a new democratic era.

Mr Ramaphosa said this in his address to world leaders at the General Debate of the 79th session of the General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York.

“We will not remain silent and watch as apartheid is perpetrated against others in Gaza as Israel continues its collective punishment of the Palestinians,” he stated.

He called for a collective effort through the UN system and other multinational institutions to end civilian suffering and for South Africa’s legal action taken against Israel through the International Court of Justice to prevail.

He said every effort must be taken to bring peace to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, and the Sahel region, but all required a truly representative and inclusive Security Council.

“The Security Council must be reformed as a matter of urgency,” Mr Ramaphosa stated. “It must become more inclusive so that the voices of all nations can be heard and considered.”

Ramaphosa said as part of the search for a safer world order, there must be greater cooperation between the UN and the African Union to resolve the root causes of wars on the continent.

Meanwhile, President Gustavo Petro Urrego of Colombia noted that the power of a country in the world “is no longer exercised by the type of economic or political system it has or its ideology, but power is wielded according to how much capacity one has to destroy.”

Mr Urrego said, “Social inequality is the sole reason for this “contemporary Armageddon”, from the “senselessness of governments that applaud genocide” to the governments that “don’t act to change economies and decarbonise them.

“The free market wasn’t freedom. Rather, what it meant was the maximisation of death.” 

He called the richest one per cent “the powerful global oligarchy” that is “bringing humankind to the very brink of its own destruction.”

He called for a “global revolution” that “will not have weapons from the global oligarchy” but will allow for the building of a global democracy.

“A new story is about to begin,” the Colombian president stressed. 

(NAN)