US ratchets up diplomatic war against South Africa

The Trump administration's exclusion of South Africa from G20 meetings comes after its recent successful hosting of the bloc's annual leaders' summit despite Washington's boycott

- Hasina Kathrada

The United States’ G20 presidency has begun with open hostility toward South Africa.

At the launch of Washington’s G20 agenda, Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Pretoria of turning its just-ended term into “an exercise in spite, division and radical agendas”, and of chasing “diversity, inclusion and aid dependency” instead of growth.

The statement drew a clear line between President Donald Trump’s vision of “innovation and entrepreneurship” and what Rubio called South Africa’s “politics of grievance,” signalling that Pretoria’s exclusion from the first Sherpa track meeting was anything but procedural.

The Trump administration is likely smarting after South Africa successfully hosted the first G20 leaders summit on the continent despite Trump’s boycott. Pretoria then objected to President Cyril Ramaphosa handing over the G20 presidency to a junior US representative.

South Africa will not beg to be included in G20 deliberations under US stewardship, Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said. His remarks underscore Pretoria’s stance that its foreign policy decisions are guided by principle, not by favour, and that it will not be swayed by diplomatic pressure or ideological posturing from Washington.

Officials at the department of international relations and cooperation echoed that sentiment. Responding to South Africa’s exclusion from the G20 Sherpa track meeting, the department's head of public diplomacy, Clayson Monyela, earlier this week said that the country “will not be intimidated into abandoning its values or its commitment to international law”.

The moment calls for endurance, international relations expert Donovan E Williams urged, of a relationship that has deteriorated since the Trump administration made unfounded allegations of a white genocide in South Africa.