Or many African countries were taken advantage of for centuries by white Europeans and put into a crappy social/financial position and are still trying to recover from it decades later. How could they afford to outbid the richer countries that took advantage of them?

I remember during the pandemic richer countries that had left over Covid vaccines nearing the end then gave the vaccines to the poorer countries. So yes, they were treated like beggars.

I think it's more accurate to say every country cares about the citizens of it's own country more than the citizens of other countries.

Cyril Ramaphosa is arguing on behalf of the people of his own country, as he should.

Note that he's not making arguments in favour of vaccine distribution prioritizing parts of the world that were are the highest risk. No regard to where there were the highest death rates (which were urban areas). Simply arguing that his country should have higher priority without any regard as to which areas of the world were seeing the highest numbers of deaths.

So he's not exactly doing anything different from any other country. And sure that's fair, a country's leader should be advocating for their own citizens. But he's just another player in the same game as everyone else.