What’s alive in 2025

The year 2025 will be big for South Africa. What the government of national unity says and does will be under intense international scrutiny. The country will host hundreds of meetings in the run-up to the summit of the Group of 20 most important global economies (G20). We take a look at what next year is likely to have in store for Israel, South Africa, and the world.

Hosting the G20 will put South Africa into the international spotlight in 2025, and the country is determined to do a good job of it. Pretoria will push issues important to the “Global South”, including climate change, economic development, and reform of the global governance system. It has also made “solidarity” one of its themes – expect attempts to rally the G20 to support the Palestinians, and pushback from some members that the principally economics-focused G20 isn’t the platform for that issue. The government of national unity is finding its feet, but it hasn’t changed its hostility to Israel. If anything, the spurious genocide case at the International Court of Justice has ratcheted up the African National Congress’s loathing of the Jewish state.

The 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, in which 1 200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage into Gaza, is still having repercussions. Fourteen months later, peace remains elusive, despite the shaky ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. More than 100 of Israel’s hostages remain in captivity, with many feared already dead. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is sure to send the region into more chaos in 2025, in ways we cannot yet imagine. Israel will certainly have to be on its guard.

The Israeli electorate was likely to punish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the polls for allowing 7 October on his watch. The long war has, however, precluded elections or a commission of enquiry. If this government survives its full term, elections are scheduled only for October 2026.

The anticipated Trump-Biden electoral showdown in the United States (US) elections failed to materialise due to the latter bowing out of the race. Donald Trump trounced Vice President Kamala Harris in the November vote. The world is bracing for an ultra-nationalist, transactional, and unpredictable Trump second term. Israel can expect more solid support, but the Ukrainians are worried that backing for their fight against Russia will be abandoned by Trump’s Washington. He is likely to try and squeeze Kyiv to make territorial concessions to Moscow, giving up the lands occupied by the Russians in Ukraine since 2014, including Crimea.

This time, Trump will have to pay more attention to Africa, which he either insulted or ignored in his first term, not least because of South Africa chairing the G20 in 2025, and the US taking over this multilateral club in 2026.

In 2025, the COP 30 United Nations climate conference will take place in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon in Brazil. I expect the environmentally conscious Brazilian government to push for more far-reaching and ambitious measures on the climate crisis, compared to the muted meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2024.

The year is also the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), one of Africa’s leading regional groupings. However, a string of coups ushering in military regimes with pro-Russian leanings have led to three states – Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger – announcing their intention to quit the institution due to ECOWAS’s supposed interference in their internal affairs. This is sure to spoil the birthday celebrations.

2025 also marks the 70th anniversary of the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, where newly independent developing world states banded together to resist picking a side in the Cold War.

Elections will be held in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Poland, and a host of other countries. In Africa, states including Cameroon, Egypt, Malawi, and Tanzania will go to the polls in 2025.

The year, the planet’s best soccer clubs will battle it out at the inaugural FIFA World Club Cup in the US in June and July. Supporters are hoping that the mighty Springboks will continue their dominance on the rugby pitch. The Women’s Rugby World Cup will be held in England in August and September.

The 22nd Maccabiah Games, the “Jewish Olympics”, is slated to be held in Israel from 6 to 22 July 2025. Let’s hope the war with Hamas will be over for this sporting showcase to take place.

This coming year is the 100th anniversary of the publication of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The first television pictures were transmitted by John Logie Baird in London 100 years ago.

Fifty years ago, in 1975, Angola was granted independence by Portugal, the Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon, and Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft.

The feeling that the world is at an inflexion point, what the Germans call a Zeitenwende, is inescapable. It will have to adjust to a second Trump administration and an increasingly bold China.

Happy New Year!

• Steven Gruzd is a political analyst based in Johannesburg. He writes in his personal capacity.