The G20 social summit 2025 ended in Johannesburg, South Africa, last Sunday as a great success despite the USA boycott for reasons that cannot be substantiated. The Trump administration claims, without evidence, that there is going on in South Africa a massacre of white minority Afrikaners and many other “repulsive” things.
Also, the USA was unhappy with the list of invited guests, with officials in Washington calling it a summit of the G100, a gross exaggeration of the 40 invites.
In Johannesburg, President Cyril Ramaphosa fired back, saying, “It could be the G1000,” because the objective was equality and inclusivity in global affairs, including peace, stability and development.
While South Africa was being diplomatically battered and humiliated by the US, the rest of Africa stood silent, despite the fact that the G20 Johannesburg summit was the first to take place on African soil in the Club’s over thirty-year history.
But it was not surprising. Africa rarely coordinates foreign policy and it would be the height of naivety to expect otherwise.
Apparently, South Africa too never invited contributions from the rest of Africa. I believe, and I stand to be corrected, there was no mechanism at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), dedicated to receiving and coordinating inputs from fellow Africans.
So, yes. Civility requires not to gatecrash a party to which you are not invited.
Trump wants South Africa expelled from the G20 because it doesn’t deserve the ranking. He has never disguised his hatred and disdain for Africans. His ranting about South Africa simply cements that narcist ego.
The African Unity (AU) is a bloc member of the G20. However, broadly speaking, Africa lacks symbolic leadership to play the global stage. As a Club of “birds of a feather,” the G20 doesn’t have a secretariat to run and coordinate its affairs. Instead, the Club depends on the country hosting the summit, to bear the cost and burden of promoting the Club’s agenda.
America will host the 2026 G20 Summit in Miami. Most likely, there will be no South African delegation but South Africa won’t be thrown out partly because of the precedence set by the US itself.
In any case, if rules be respected, there is no way America won’t work with South Africa in the year ahead to prepare the next summit.
Because there is no secretariat, the G20 came up with a troika system of running its affairs made up of the immediate past host country (South Africa in this case), the next host country (the US) and future, (2027) G20 host country, The United Kingdom.
The three countries, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom, shall have to work closely together to ensure continuation of the gathering’s legacy and its symbolic global leadership.
In fact, by staying away from the Johannesburg-2025 G20 Summit, the Trump administration may have disadvantaged itself more as a global leader than it had intended to hurt South Africa.
Summarised thus, President Cyril Ramaphosa emerged from hosting the G20 summit in 2025 as a formidable global leader who rejected “bullying” by big brother US.
Almost all the people, including South Africa’s sworn enemies, praised the country for hosting a very successful meeting, tinged with plausible “culture shock” as women genuflected before guests, common form of curtseying in Africa but completely foreign in some cultures.
There are lessons to learn from the Johannesburg summit. Trump’s stance was actually a trade war, aimed both at South Africa and China.
The United States is South Africa’s second biggest trading partner after China. Trump is a big businessman himself who also wilds the mightiest power on earth.
He was not happy that South Africa trades more with China. In fact, he didn’t want to be at the same table with China in a country where America plays second fiddle. It was all about eating and not bullying as such.
South African and the rest of the continent should seek to play the world stage together. Currently, Africa’s population stands at about 1.5 billion people, about the same figure as China’s.
China’s GDP in 2025 stood at nearly dollars 20 trillion, about 50 times more compared to South Africa’s dollars 400 billion GDP. Given Africa resources, there is no reason Africa shouldn’t be a major global consumer.
Namibia’s President, Madame Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, aptly told the summit that Africa should be the global lender and not a beggar. It is quite possible.
