Lessons from South Africa

Highlights from David Beckmann’s address at the 2025 G20 Interfaith Forum, Cape Town (August 10–14).

I was invited to speak last month at the G20 Interfaith Forum in Cape Town, South Africa. Faith leaders from around the world and diverse faiths gathered to discuss issues that will be on the agenda—or that we think should be on agenda—of this year’s G20 Summit. The G20 includes 19 powerful nations, the European Union, and the African Union. 

My brief remarks focused on the Trump administration’s destruction of our government’s international aid program and its disruption of the international trading system. The U.S. government isn’t participating in this year’s G20 process. 

The Interfaith Forum is recommending continued G20 support for the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, which was launched at last year’s G20 Interfaith Forum in Brasilia. We are also urging multilateral efforts to reduce the crippling financial burden that many developing countries, especially low-income countries, are now carrying.

I stayed in Cape Town for four days after the conference to learn a bit more about South Africa today. What I learned was discouraging. Although apartheid ended in 1994, de facto racial segregation continues. Nearly all Black Africans in Cape Town live in crowded slum “townships.” Corruption among the current generation of African politicians has been scandalous. As a result, the incomes of South African people have been declining for the last ten years. Economic inequality and the homicide rate are higher than in any other country in the world.

On the other hand, I met with inspiring Christian and interfaith leaders. Theo Mayekiso, a grassroots interfaith leader, guided my son Andrew and me through several of the townships. We met with Christian leaders and others who are working at the grassroots to inspire hope and lead community development efforts. The next day, Theo and his wife took me to meet with Renier Koegelenberg, a leader in the Dutch Reformed Church and a senior advisor to the National Council of Churches. He gave us a macro perspective on how South Africa’s churches are working at the grassroots and as advocates at the national level.

We live at a disappointing time in both the United States and South Africa. But my hope for the future was reinforced by the faith and activism of the leaders I met at the Interfaith Forum and in the townships of Cape Town.