PREVIEW
Move comes after US President boycotted Johannesburg meeting
United States President Donald Trump’s administration is intensifying its diplomatic feud with South Africa, inviting Poland to next year’s G20 summit in Miami and excluding South Africa. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government handed over the G20 presidency to the US in November.
With stronger language on Africa’s green energy transition, debt restructuring and climate change, the Leaders’ Declaration adopted at the Johannesburg summit on 22 November was seen as a diplomatic success for Ramaphosa, much to the chagrin of Washington, which had insisted that a formal declaration could not be issued (AC Vol 66 No 24, First the good news – then reality bites & Johannesburg and Belém summits send defiant message to Trump). Trump now appears to be taking his revenge.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz has already remonstrated with Trump over what most G20 members regard as a breach of the organisation’s protocols.
For now, South Africa is adopting a conciliatory tone, with Ramaphosa’s officials saying South Africa is prepared to step back from the G20 for a year until the United Kingdom takes over the presidency in a year’s time.
The Trump administration has signalled that its G20 presidency will focus on removing regulatory burdens, unlocking affordable and secure energy supply chains, and pioneering new technologies and innovation.
On 3 December, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described Ramaphosa’s G20 presidency as ‘an exercise in spite, division, and radical agendas that have nothing to do with economic growth’. Rubio claimed that South Africa had shut out US officials from negotiations and ‘fundamentally tarnished the G20’s reputation’.
South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola replied: ‘Let me extend congratulations to the United States on assuming the G20 Presidency … your words compel me to speak, not merely as a representative of a government, but as a voice from a nation whose very existence is a testament to a profound truth: that the deepest divides can be bridged.’
The G20 works by consensus. In 2022, the US and European allies were unable to expel Russia over its invasion of Ukraine after failing to obtain unanimous support from other members.
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