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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is making final preparations to attend the big BRICS summit on Sunday and Monday in Brazil. However, his mind may well be some 5,000 miles away in his home nation, which is facing the growing challenges of hosting another major global diplomatic event — the G20 meeting.
South Africa’s hosting of this year’s G20 should be a victory lap for Ramaphosa and his country. It is the first time the African continent has chaired the global forum, yet the process has been beset with problems, largely emanating from the US.
A few weeks ago, Ramaphosa visited the White House to try to course correct relations with the Trump team. However, the meeting proved tense, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly accusing South Africa of “white genocide,” and it is still not clear whether the US president will attend November’s leadership summit, despite the fact that Washington takes over as the next G20 host.
Before his meeting with Ramaphosa, Trump declared that “South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly. The United States won’t stand for it, we will act. Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of the situation has been completed.”
Moreover, Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 7 which claimed that an expropriation law, passed in December, enables “the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation. This act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.” Washington donated about $440 million in aid to South Africa in 2023, most of which was for healthcare programs.
It is not just Trump who has berated Ramaphosa. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who declined an invitation to attend a G20 foreign ministers meeting earlier this year, has declared that “South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote solidarity, equality, & sustainability. In other words: DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and climate change. My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.”
South Africa’s hosting of this year’s G20 should be a victory lap for President Cyril Ramaphosa and his country.
Andrew Hammond
What Trump and Rubio refer to in their denunciation is the 2024 South Africa Expropriation Act, which aims to resolve ownership inequality issues created by the pre-1994 apartheid system of white minority rule. The controversial law has drawn criticism for potentially disregarding private property rights, particularly those of the white minority, as it potentially permits state land seizures without compensation. To date, no land has been expropriated.
The hostility of the Trump team to South Africa is making it much harder for Ramaphosa to host the G20, yet this is only the latest example of growing geopolitical divisions affecting the club in recent years. Tensions have long been high, too, between China and the West, and recent summits have seen significant disagreements over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which have caused diplomatic fireworks.
In 2022, 2023, and 2024, G20 ministers frequently clashed diplomatically, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov walking out of some meetings. Moreover, the customary group pictures of the so-called “G20 family” have become rarer.
In this context, there are significant challenges to constructive discussion taking place at the G20 this year — this despite the strong support that South Africa has received from other powers, including the EU. For instance, European Council President Antonio Costa has highlighted with Ramaphosa “the EU’s commitment to deepen ties with South Africa, as a reliable and predictable partner.” He added that the EU offers “full support to South Africa’s leadership of G20 and its ambition to strengthen multilateral cooperation and the Pact for the Future to address the most pressing global issues.”
The backing of Brussels for Pretoria reflects not just its partnership with the country and the wider continent, but also the concern that Washington’s absence from the G20 will only benefit Moscow and China.
Yet, even if some governments, like the Trump team, have disagreements with parts of Ramaphosa’s G20 agenda to address climate change and fairer finance for poorer nations, there are other items for constructive engagement. Take the example of the future of the energy agenda in Africa in which US firms have a huge stake. The danger if the US does not engage on these agendas is that it will lose a critical mass of its economic foothold in South Africa and much of the rest of the continent.
All of this highlights why 2025 will be perhaps the most unpredictable G20 year ever. Amid the uncertainty, however, what is at stake is more than the future of the multilateral forum. At play are much wider questions about US international leadership in the new era.
- Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.