South African Leader Decries New World Order in Dig at Trump

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers his state-of-the-nation address in Cape Town, on Feb. 12.

Photographer: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa denounced a shakeup in the global order, delivering a clear rebuke to Donald Trump and his America First policy without mentioning the US president by name.

The world is rapidly changing and has become one in which “narrow self-interest has replaced the common good, a world in which trade is used as an instrument of coercion, a world in which might is right and the powerful impose themselves on the weak,” Ramaphosa said in his state-of-the-nation address to lawmakers in Cape Town on Thursday night.