Lula’s Brazil election win has given the world breathing space

I was really in tears when I wrote this piece. I did not watch Brazil’s presidential election with the comfortable detachment of someone observing another country’s politics. In fact, when the results came last night, I posted on social media: “Please someone tell me this is not a joke.” It was that heavy!

When the first round put Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, I was mortified. And afraid. South Africa seemed on the verge of losing an indispensable ally. The climate crisis was about to lose an influential advocate. An already battered multilateral system risked losing another leader who believes that powerful countries must answer to something beyond their own appetites.

So, yes, Lula’s second-round victory, with 51.75%, brings relief. For Brazil. For South Africa. For Africa. For the Global South. For those who still believe that workers, the poor and countries outside the centres of global power deserve a meaningful say in the world they inhabit.

Cyril Ramaphosa must be breathing a sigh of relief.

Brazil’s electoral authorities have declared Lula the winner over Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. This is a consequential defeat for the international right and its ambition to make its ascendancy appear inevitable. It does not extinguish that movement but it does demonstrate that it can be beaten.

A presidential defeat does not dissolve the grievances, institutions, money or digital networks that sustain a political project. Nobody should mistake this result for the disappearance of Bolsonarismo.

But neither should we diminish what Brazilians have done.

They have preserved a government whose international outlook recognises that hunger, inequality, climate breakdown and war demand collective political action. At a moment when cruelty so often masquerades as strength, that is worth celebrating.

The international stakes were never imaginary. Donald Trump’s support for Jair Bolsonaro is a matter of record. Reuters has also documented efforts by officials within his administration to advance the Bolsonaro family’s political cause. Trump withheld a formal endorsement of Flávio, but the political affinity was plain.

Elon Musk’s interventions belong in this picture too. His confrontation with Brazilian institutions, and his amplification of a post presenting a prospective Flávio victory as a geopolitical turn towards Washington and away from Beijing, make it difficult to sustain the delusion of a platform owner standing serenely above politics.

For me, the anxiety after the first round was about the growing convergence of commercial power, political reaction and control over public attention. It was the fear that a politics hostile to migrants, dismissive of science and contemptuous of international restraint would acquire another formidable partner.

When the owners of our communications infrastructure have political preferences, commercial interests and the power to shape visibility, we should be worried. We should demand transparency about how algorithms distribute attention, whose speech they reward and what safeguards protect elections.

That concern does not require us to claim, without evidence, that an algorithm determined Brazil’s result. The concentration of such power is itself a democratic question.

Brazil has already confronted it. In 2024, its supreme court ordered X suspended after the company failed to comply with legal requirements and court orders, including appointing a local legal representative. Service resumed after compliance. The dispute involved the regulation of harmful content and the authority of Brazilian institutions.

A billionaire’s ownership of a platform cannot confer immunity from the laws of the countries in which it operates.

A question of sovereignty

South Africans should understand what is at stake here. Sovereignty means little if a country can elect its government but cannot hold powerful foreign corporations accountable within its borders.

Lula’s address to the 81st United Nations General Assembly a few weeks ago,  spoke directly to this struggle. He defended Brazilian sovereignty, challenged external interference and confronted the paralysis of an international system increasingly unable to protect vulnerable people. His declaration that Brazil “does not fit into anyone’s backyard” carried a resonance far beyond Latin America.

For countries accustomed to being treated as markets, mineral deposits, strategic footholds or diplomatic voting blocs, there is dignity in that insistence.

There is also a practical necessity. A stronger Global South needs countries capable of negotiating, organising and sometimes disagreeing with powerful partners without surrendering their independence.

This is why Lula matters to South Africa and to BRICS. Brazil gives weight to the demand that developing countries help shape the rules governing finance, trade, development and international security. Under Lula, that demand is connected to a politics of social inclusion.

BRICS itself deserves no romanticism. Its members have different interests, political systems and, some, poor records on human rights. Multipolarity alone guarantees neither justice nor peace. Replacing one hierarchy with several competing hierarchies would offer little comfort to the people at the bottom.

The task is to make a more representative world more accountable too. Lula’s continued presence strengthens the possibility of that argument.

On Palestine his voice has been especially consequential. At the UN General Assembly in September he condemned the genocide inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza and warned that Israel’s illegal settlement expansion was undermining the possibility of a Palestinian state. Lula rightly said: “But nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

For South Africa, which has placed international law at the centre of its response to Gaza, this solidarity is important. The burden of defending Palestinian life should never fall on a handful of states while others calculate the diplomatic cost of speaking. 

On climate, the difference between Lula’s administration and the Bolsonaro legacy is measurable. Brazil’s environment ministry reported that Amazon deforestation in 2025 was about half its 2022 level. Environmental protection can produce results when governments restore institutions and choose to enforce the law.

Those choices matter to Africa. Our farmers, coastal communities and cities experience a climate crisis they did comparatively little to create. Decisions about the Amazon have consequences beyond Brazil’s borders, just as decisions about emissions and climate finance reach deep into African lives.

But an honest celebration must also confront Lula’s contradictions. His support for expanding oil exploration sits uneasily beside his climate leadership. Petrobras received permission in October 2025 to drill an exploratory well off Amapá on Brazil’s Equatorial Margin. That decision sits uncomfortably with his environmental achievements.

So our praise and solidarity must leave room for accountability when necessary. 

The same applies to Brazil’s domestic record. Millions of Brazilians still face poverty, insecurity and inadequate public services. Concerns about crime, corruption and the cost of living cannot simply be dismissed.

But there has been progress. According to Brazil’s statistics agency, 8.6 million people left poverty between 2023 and 2024. Yet 23.1% of the population remained poor in 2024, and 3.5% lived in extreme poverty. Those figures describe both an achievement and an unfinished obligation.

For workers, Lula’s victory preserves a political tradition in which wages, social protection and the dignity of labour belong at the centre of government. His renewed mandate must now be judged by what it delivers to people whose lives remain precarious.

Opportunity for South Africa

For Africa, the opportunity is equally concrete. We need partners willing to work with us on food security, industrial development, climate finance and reform of international institutions. We need relationships that expand our capacity to act and negotiate.

South Africa retains a significant partner in that endeavour. Ramaphosa should use the breathing space to deepen cooperation around an agenda that produces material benefits. Diplomatic friendship earns its value through what countries accomplish together.

I am relieved because another outcome would have made an already harsh international environment harsher still. Because the institutions through which weaker countries seek protection need advocates with political weight. Because climate science needs governments prepared to act. Because Palestinian lives need defenders willing to withstand pressure.

And because people who work, struggle and hope deserve evidence that politics can still respond to them.

Lula’s victory is good for Brazil and its workers. It is good for multilateralism, for Africa and for the possibility of a stronger Global South.

Today, Brazil has given the world breathing space.

We should use it. DM