The tensions between Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa have escalated dramatically, culminating in Trump boycotting this weekend’s G20 summit — the first ever hosted on African soil. Reported by RNZ.
The rift began during an Oval Office meeting nine months ago. In the middle of the discussion, Trump dimmed the lights and played a video claiming white South African farmers were being persecuted.
He waved newspaper articles supporting the debunked allegations while Ramaphosa — who rejects the fringe theory — sat silently beside him. Elon Musk, another vocal supporter of the claims, was also present.
Trump has refused to drop the issue. Earlier this month, he declared on social media that it was a “disgrace” for South Africa to host the G20, repeating false claims about attacks on Afrikaner farmers and land confiscations. Ramaphosa responded bluntly: “Their loss.”
Trump’s absence threatens to weaken the summit’s ability to make progress on key global challenges, including climate resilience, clean energy transition, debt relief and fair access to critical minerals.
The US president’s boycott also raises doubts about whether leaders will be able to issue the traditional final declaration, which requires consensus.
For South Africa, the summit was meant to be a milestone event — an opportunity to showcase its leadership and diplomatic influence. But the absence of one of the world’s most powerful nations has cast a shadow over what was expected to be a landmark moment.
Global superpowers absent
The high-powered gathering of 19 major industrial nations, and the European Union, represents 85 percent of global GDP and two-thirds of the world's population.
Trump won't be the only high-profile absence this weekend.
According to Reuters, Trump's ally, Argentine President Javier Milei, is also staying away on ideological grounds.
Russia's Vladimir Putin will skip it because of the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him over the invasion of Ukraine, while China is sending Premier Li Qiang, instead of President Xi Jinping.
Not only is Trump boycotting the summit, but the US is also not sending a single government representative.
"No US Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue," Trump wrote, referring to debunked claims that white farmers are being persecuted.
Australia has skin in this game: former prime minister Kevin Rudd played a decisive role in founding the G20 leaders' meeting in 2008, to help coordinate the response to the Global Financial Crisis and progress talks on climate change.
It's given Australia a seat at the table for world economic policy, and for the past 17 years, prime ministers have routinely made the pilgrimage to the annual talks (even hosting in 2014).
'Save the furniture'
As he flew to Johannesburg, for his final diplomatic summit of the season, Anthony Albanese insisted the G20 was still relevant, despite the absence of the "two superpowers", referring to the US and Chinese presidents.
"The G20 is certainly relevant," Albanese said, telling reporters he would hold bilateral meetings with the leaders of India, South Korea and Japan, among others.
"Whenever there is a forum that Australia has the opportunity to participate in, we need to take it, we are a middle power" he said.
"We're not doing it for fun or sightseeing; we're doing it because it's in our national interest."
The prime minister will be on the ground for 48 hours before returning to Canberra on Monday for the final sitting week of the year.
With an isolationist president in the White House, former Department of Foreign Affairs secretary Peter Varghese said the best Australia could do at multilateral forums like the G20 was "save the furniture".
"Trump's non-attendance reflects his fundamentally unilateralist instincts and his scepticism of many multilateral groups", Varghese told the ABC, pointing to Trump's absence from the recent APEC summit in South Korea.
"There is no question that while multilateralism is not dead, large parts of it are in suspended animation and will not be revived for as long as the US, the architect of the post-war order, is no longer interested in it.
"The best we can do is save as much of the furniture as we can and to look for arrangements which are bigger than regional and short of global."
'Empty chair' handover
For Treasurer Jim Chalmers, the G20 is an opportunity for leaders to bolster confidence and certainty in "choppy waters", as global growth falls to its weakest pace since Rudd helped establish the G20 leaders' summit in 2008.
"The world has more or less muddled through the last six or nine months and dealt with these escalating trade tensions, in a way that is a little bit better than what many had feared," Chalmers said in Perth this week.
"But that doesn't mean there's not still a lot of global economic uncertainty, a lot of risk, a lot of volatility and unpredictability.
"So that strikes me as the most important thing for the G20 leaders to focus on."
While Trump won't be there, he'll loom large over it.
At the end of the summit on Sunday, Ramaphosa is meant to hand over the G20 to the next host, who happens to be Trump.
"I don't want to hand over to an empty chair, but the empty chair will be there," Ramaphosa said last week of the US president's boycott.
He made the comments while preparing for the summit in Soweto, according to Reuters, the Johannesburg suburb where Black people were once confined under the apartheid rules that barred them from living in the city itself.
Trump's attacks aside, South Africa is wrestling with some complicated legacies of its own.
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