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All systems go despite Trump's tempest as global allies rally to defend SA's G20 presidency

All systems go despite Trump's tempest as global allies rally to defend SA's G20 presidency
Newly confirmed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on 21 January in Washington, DC. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Victoria O’Regan and Peter Fabricius
By Victoria O’Regan and Peter Fabricius
15 Feb 2025
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With the US cutting aid and casting a shadow over South Africa’s moment in the world spotlight, key nations stand firm, refusing to let the US dictate the agenda.

South Africa’s allies have rallied behind the country in the face of an unprecedented US attack from the Donald J Trump administration, offering full support for its Group of 20 (G20) presidency this year, and more broadly.

Diplomats in Pretoria believe the planned G20 meetings will go ahead this year, regardless of whether the US attends or at what level, though they have different opinions on whether US President Trump will attend the Heads of State summit in November – and whether he could sabotage it. 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement last week that he would not attend the G20 Heads of State summit, and probably not the foreign ministers’ preparatory meeting on 20 and 21 February, raised doubts about whether South Africa can pull off a successful presidency – the first in Africa.

Read more: Geopolitical tensions pose unprecedented challenges for SA’s G20 presidency during Trump 2.0

In a post on X, Rubio said he would not be coming to Johannesburg because South Africa was “doing very bad things”. He objected to South Africa’s G20 theme of “solidarity, equality and sustainability”, equating this to “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and climate change” – both of which are anathema to the new Trump administration.




Zane Dangor, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) director-general and G20 Sherpa, told Daily Maverick’s Ferial Haffajee last week that Rubio’s decision was not unexpected, but the meeting would go ahead. 

Delivering his State of the Nation Address on 6 February, President Cyril Ramaphosa praised South Africa’s G20 theme, and announced he would send a delegation of government and other leaders around the world to explain South Africa’s position and what it wished to achieve with its G20 presidency. 

Trump struck another blow on 7 February, ordering that all US foreign assistance to South Africa be stopped because the country had passed the Expropriation Act – which he falsely claimed enabled the government to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation” – and also because of the genocide case South Africa had brought against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

This double blow left South Africa reeling and raised doubts about whether the US would participate in any G20 meetings this year. But the US administration’s attacks prompted other major partners to leap to South Africa’s defence. 

Newly confirmed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 21 January 2025, Washington, DC. (Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images)


‘G20 in SA is very important’


France, Germany, Italy and the EU have thrown their support behind South Africa. In a video posted to X this week, the ambassadors said the countries shared many values. 

In the video, Italy’s ambassador to South Africa, Alberto Vecchi, said: “Like you, we are committed to multilateralism, rules-based international order, and more equity and justice in the world.”

Germany’s ambassador to South Africa, Andreas Peschke, said there were many parallels between the EU and South Africa. “We think that multilateral cooperation is very important, and that we need to strengthen, not weaken, the multilateral system because it has come under severe stress. In that context, the G20 in South Africa is very important… 

“We’ve said for a long time, it’s the first time the G20 circle is coming to the African continent and there’s a lot of opportunities to really use that to put African and developmental issues on the agenda,” Peschke told Daily Maverick this week.  

“We actually don’t agree with the assessment of the new US administration that was expressed in the executive order, and we wanted to show, as partners of South Africa, that we remain committed to continue our part of the cooperation,” added Peschke.

EU Council president António Costa, also announced on X that, in a call with Ramaphosa, he had “highlighted the EU’s commitment to deepen ties with South Africa as a reliable and predictable partner”. 

Costa expressed the EU’s “full support” to South Africa’s leadership of the G20, as well as “its ambition to strengthen multilateral cooperation”. 



Ramaphosa responded with a separate post, saying he looked forward to working with the EU leadership to ensure a “successful” G20, in line with the theme South Africa has chosen. 

Diplomats Daily Maverick spoke to this week mostly agreed that the G20 agenda would unfold with or without the US, though its absence or reduced presence would have an impact.  

One ambassador who has attended preparatory G20 meetings noted that the group’s development agenda, for example, had remained more or less the same for about 20 years.

“Okay. It’s a very big country, but it’s not like the other 19 members have suddenly changed their minds … or think that South Africa’s priorities are very wrong.”

He noted that some Western countries did not agree on all of South Africa’s ideas, such as the details of international tax reform. 

“But it’s not like this chairmanship is going in the wrong direction for most countries,” he added.

This ambassador thought that by staying away, or at least lowering the level of its participation, the US would merely be ceding influence to its global rivals such as China and even Russia.

If Trump didn’t show up in November, then it would be easier for other countries to bypass the US. But he added that “all countries are struggling to figure out how to handle this new world order”.

Speaking to Daily Maverick, African Union (AU), G20 Sherpa and Commissioner of Trade and Industry Albert Muchanga said the AU sees SA’s G20 presidency “as a development of major significance”. 

“First, this is the first time an African country chairs this informal group of global international cooperation. This is historical. Second, when you look at the priorities of the South African G20 presidency, they are aligned, [and] speak directly or indirectly to the programmes and strategies [of] the African Union Agenda 2063,” said Muchanga.

He added that the AU’s collaboration with SA did not start with SA’s G20 presidency. 

“We have been coordinating positions in G20 meetings under the Brazilian G20 presidency, in line with modalities guiding the participation of the African Union in the G20, which were adopted by the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government in February 2024.”

Dirco Minister Ronald Lamola’s spokesperson, Chrispin Phiri, said: “The world’s top diplomats will gather for the first time on African soil to tackle issues of common concern. South Africa’s G20 [presidency] enjoys strong support from other G20 countries and the African continent. 

“Our G20 priorities and deliverables were articulated during the first sherpa meeting in December 2024 in Sandton, and were widely supported by all delegates, from the Global South and the Global North.

“Our priorities are a continuation of those advanced by the previous G20 presidencies of Indonesia (2022), India (2023), Brazil (2024), and even Italy in 2021. 

“One of the areas we seek to develop momentum on is the UN Sustainable Development Agenda, which requires that we foster a paradigm shift to accelerate the implementation of practical solutions.” 

Read more: SA works the Washington halls to avert aid and trade crisis

‘US not the only global power’


Speaking to Daily Maverick this week, director of the African Centre for the Study of the US at Wits University Bob Wekesa said he believed that South Africa would be able to preside over this major grouping of countries, “but, of course, there is a complication that arises out of the US non-availability, unless things change”. 

He added: “What gives me optimism that South Africa will be able to pull it off is that the US is not the only global power in a multipolar world in the G20. The current US administration has also ruffled feathers with its partners who are the other G20 members in the Western world.”

China’s ambassador to South Africa, Wu Peng, met Lamola the same day as Rubio’s announcement and posted on X that he had expressed to him “China’s readiness to support South Africa’s G20 presidency”.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will attend the foreign ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg, as will Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, according to Reuters report. 

Another ambassador thought that Trump would not wish to miss the summit in November even if Rubio did not attend the foreign ministers’ meeting. He noted that foreign ministers often missed G20 meetings for domestic reasons. 

But he thought Trump would attend the November summit because “it’s a big picture. His ego will probably want to be in the picture.” And any decisions taken at earlier meetings, such as the foreign ministers’ meeting, would in any case be provisional until endorsed by the summit. 

There are different views about whether Trump could wreck South Africa’s G20 presidency. In December, Ramaphosa said the G20 had adopted the principle of “sufficient consensus”, meaning that if one country disagreed – probably the US – the summit decisions would still stand. 

However, one ambassador noted that other members had rejected the idea of “sufficient consensus”, so the US would have to agree for any decisions to pass. 

“And if Trump decided to reject the summit declaration, that would wreck the summit in the sense that that would be the only thing reported,” said the ambassador.

However, other diplomats said that if the US disagreed, the other 20 (now including the AU) would just go ahead without it. And that would only underscore Trump’s isolation and embolden US enemies such as China. 

An ambassador thought it was well within the G20’s abilities to manage this sort of behaviour. 

John Kirton, director of the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto, told Daily Maverick that Rubio’s decision not to attend the first foreign ministers’ meeting – and the reasons he gave for it – is a small, short-term setback for South Africa’s G20 presidency. 

Kirton said: “But it does not foretell the future, as much will change before the Johannesburg summit arrives in November, with President Trump highly likely to attend. 

“At this first foreign ministers’ meeting, some issues will be easier to advance without the US there, given the rapidly changing and ever more extreme US position on issues such as Gaza’s future and the release by Hamas of all the hostages by Sunday [16 February]. There is enough to do at this G20 meeting to make it worthwhile without the US there.”

Diplomats are generally sympathetic to South Africa’s predicament and believe it has so far handled the US attacks well, both in its G20 presidency and in its bilateral relationship with the US. 

“I think they have done a good job,” said one Western ambassador. He didn’t agree with some opposition parties that South Africa’s spat with the US represented a failure of South Africa diplomacy. He noted that no country was immune from Trump’s attacks, including Canada, Mexico, Panama, Denmark and Jordan. 

And he said Trump’s Executive Order cutting off all aid to South Africa mainly because of the Expropriation Act was “based on one fake news story about how Afrikaners are treated here, and the second is a disagreement about use of [the] International Court of Justice”.

He said that although his country was not formally supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, it supported South Africa’s right to submit the case.

“You have to stand your ground. If not, you’re going to be pushed over any time.”

Apart from the G20, how South Africa will manage its bilateral relations with the US is unclear to the diplomats we spoke to.

“Nobody anticipated this level of vitriol and this kind of hammering,” said a former diplomat, referring to the swift succession of attacks from the Trump camp.  

One diplomat said the problem for South Africa was that the rush of hostile decisions and announcements from the Trump administration did not seem to be consistent with an overall policy position, but seemed more instinctive and vitriolic. This made reacting to them more difficult and posed the hard question of what Ramaphosa’s team of special envoys could possibly say to persuade the Trump administration to back off. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.


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