“Moral failure”: Catholic Priest in South Africa on Debt Crisis, Urges G20 Presidency to break Debt Injustice Cycle

Johannesburg, 05 November, 2025 / 9:01 PM

The Director of the Justice and Peace Commission (JPC) at the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) has described the current debt burden on Africa and developing countries as “a moral failure” and a cycle that the current holder of the Group of Twenty (G20) presidency should bring to an end.

In a November 3 statement issued during the presentation of a joint petition on debt cancellation by South African leaders to the G20 Presidency, Fr. Stanslaus Muyebe expressed optimism that South Africa’s presidency would be “recorded in history” as the one that “broke the cycle of debt injustice—and opened a new future for the children of Africa and the Global South.”

“When African nations collectively hold more than US$1.1 trillion in external debt and are effectively held in conditions of perpetual debt bondage—that is a moral failure,” said Fr. Muyebe.

The JPC official added that the debt burden continues to subject “twenty-three African countries” to channel more resources towards “debt servicing” than towards social development initiatives.

It is a moral failure, emphasized the member of the Order of Preachers (OP), that countries on the African continent “are spending more on debt servicing obligations than on public health, care, and education combined.”

“When the so-called ‘African Premium’ forces African countries to pay an estimated US$74.5 billion every year in excess interest solely because they are African, that is a moral failure,” he said, adding that the continent’s continued “debt vulnerability” stems from a lack of “substantive economic sovereignty.”

He said, “Debt vulnerability persists because African states continue to hold political independence without sovereignty over minerals, food systems, energy systems, and financial systems.”

Fr. Muyebe called on the South African nation to take advantage of the G20 Presidency it assumed in December 2023—and which is set to conclude in November 2024—"to challenge the global economic structures that deprive Africa of mineral sovereignty, industrial policy space, and the ability to beneficiate and industrialize at scale."

“We urge South Africa to use its G20 Presidency to revive and advance this agenda—including the affirmation of the right to mineral,” he said, making reference to the international community’s initiatives within the United Nations (UN) during the 1960s and 1970s to establish a treaty aimed at a new global economic order, which included “the principle of resource sovereignty for the global south.”

In the November 3 statement, the JPC Director expressed the commission’s pride “in the historic reality that South Africa is the first African country to host the G20” and commended the South African government for “elevating debt sustainability for developing countries as one of the four core priorities” of the Presidency. 

He hailed the South African G20 Presidency for taking bold positions on reforming “the G20 Common Framework for debt treatment, the establishment of a Borrowers’ Forum to rebalance power asymmetries between creditors and debtors, and the entrenchment of the Seville Pledges,” saying these commitments should shape how the world addresses debt distress going forward.

Realized under the theme ‘Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability,’ South Africa’s G20 presidency is set to conclude with the 20th G20 Summit in Johannesburg, which is scheduled for November 22–23.

Founded in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 as an informal forum for the finance ministers and central bank governors of the most important industrialized and developing economies to discuss international economic and financial stability, the G20 has membership from the “world’s major economies, representing 85 percent of global GDP, 75 percent of international trade, and two-thirds of the world’s population.

The 19 countries of the G20 include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (U.S.). Other entities are the EU and, starting in 2023, the African Union (AU).