SA and like-minded democracies should urgently advocate for free and fair elections in Venezuela

South Africa rightly condemned the US unilateral intervention in Venezuela as a violation of the United Nations Charter, which obligates the US to respect the sovereign equality of all member states.

As a liberal democracy that has effectively parried the ill-informed and racist ploys of the Trump administration, South Africa should now advocate for a fresh election in Venezuela.

The election should be supervised by a coalition of Latin American democracies, perhaps organised by Brazil, the European Union and several credible US observer groups, such as the Carter Center, National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (if the latter two can raise the necessary funds). International observers should arrive several months ahead of the vote to inspire hope among the Venezuelan people and public confidence in the integrity of the election.

Members of SA’s Independent Electoral Commission could play a critical role in ensuring the credibility of the election.

In Venezuela’s 2024 elections, officially, the now captured president Nicolás Maduro won 52% of the votes compared with 44.2% for his rival Edmundo González. However, opposition activists had managed to gather more than 83% of the voting tallies, which showed that Maduro had won only 30% of the vote, while González garnered 67%.

The opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado, was barred from running. Her party declined to back the Maduro loyalist running in “opposition” but convinced González, a retired diplomat, to run as a Machado “stand-in”.

Freedom Manifesto

On 9 November 2025, Machado published a Freedom Manifesto, which bears similarities to South Africa’s Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People on 26 June 1955.

The preambles of both are a reaffirmation of national beliefs in universal values. South Africa’s version begins with the country “belongs to all who live in it”, while Machado’s version endorses “freedom” for all Venezuelans. Dignity for all citizens is the common root in South Africa’s 1996 Constitution and the one Machado envisions for her nation.

The US did not intervene in SA, but it was aligned with the apartheid racial autocracy until the late 1980s. When Jimmy Carter was elected as president in 1976, the contradiction between the US supporting universal human rights and apartheid was raised; however, an extensive review by the CIA concluded that the race-based division of South Africa was the only “conceivable” outcome. One wonders if there are not comparable aspects of the CIA’s underestimation of Venezuela’s popular commitment to full democracy.

US President Donald Trump reportedly said Machado is “a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect”. He also reportedly said the major oil companies would spend billions of dollars repairing Venezuela’s energy sector, without credible evidence of those corporations being willing to again take the risks, given their past claims for redress and the current glut of oil causing rock-bottom prices.

More immediately and urgently, South Africa and other liberal democracies should press ahead in their support of credible elections to be held in Venezuela. There are no good reasons to delay the elections. Certainly, US leaders have been sending confusing signals of their plans for Venezuelans, which may or may not conform to the popular political pressures for full democracy, as was the case in South Africa.

Machado has praised Trump for his intervention to overthrow decades of autocracy under Hugo Chavez and Maduro. The UN Security Council has met and rightly signalled the widespread international condemnation of the US violation of that body’s core value of sovereign equality.

But, contrary to Trump’s evident belief that we have entered a multipolar world with the US dominating the Western Hemisphere, the world appears to me more promising, provided democracies stand together and oppose autocracy, wherever it occurs or threatens to occur, as currently in the US.

In Machado we can see thinking that’s parallel to the democratic ideas held by Nelson Mandela. At a minimum, SA diplomats should explore with like-minded democrats the prospects for holding free and fair elections in Venezuela. DM

John Stremlau is honorary professor, international relations, at the University of the Witwatersrand.