JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — This weekend’s G20 Leaders’ Summit in South Africa was unusual for several reasons. The first summit on the African continent was also the first time the U.S. had boycotted the meeting of the world’s largest economies.
It was also unprecedented that the group agreed to a declaration at the meeting’s start rather than its conclusion, and that there was no ceremonial handover between the outgoing and incoming G20 chairs.
The Trump administration boycotted the event after President Trump falsely accused the South African government of confiscating white-owned land and allowing the killing of white Afrikaners, and objected to what it considered the summit’s DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — agenda.
Despite what some officials and analysts said were Washington’s attempts to derail the event, South African Minister of International Relations Ronald Lamola was upbeat as it wrapped up on Sunday at a convention center near the Johannesburg township of Soweto. “In a nutshell … this has been a great success for our country,” he said.
Earlier Sunday, host President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the meeting closed, banging a ceremonial gavel on the table. “This gavel of this G20 summit formally closes this summit and now moves on to the next president of the G20, which is the United States, where we shall see each other again next year,” he said.
Usually the gavel is handed to the leader of the country taking over the rotating chairmanship, but President Trump was not in attendance. Washington had asked that Ramaphosa hand over to a junior embassy official, but the South Africans refused. “I mean, it’s a breach of protocol. It has never happened before and it was never going to happen for the first time here in South Africa,” Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told reporters. The handover will now take place on Monday between South African and U.S. officials of similar rank.
The U.S. had also told the South Africans that they should not issue a joint declaration at the summit’s close, and that if they issued something it should only be called a “chair’s statement.” However, Ramaphosa — who said ahead of the event “we will not be bullied” — announced at the meeting’s opening on Saturday that consensus had been reached and a joint statement was issued without U.S. input.
While G20 declarations are not binding, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly criticized the move, accusing Ramaphosa of “refusing to facilitate a smooth transition of the G20 presidency” and saying Trump looked forward to “restoring legitimacy” to the group next year; he has said he plans to hold the event in Florida.
The declaration contained DEI language disliked by the Trump administration, stressing the threat of climate change, the importance of achieving “gender equality” and the debt burden faced by poorer countries. Argentina — whose libertarian president, Javier Milei, is a strong Trump ally and did not attend in solidarity with Trump but sent other representation — voiced some objections but the declaration was still issued.
World leaders in attendance thanked South Africa for its leadership, with French President Emmanuel Macron giving Ramaphosa a warm hug. But Macron noted divisions at the summit were still apparent. While Ramaphosa said South Africa had put “the Global South at the heart of the agenda” and prioritized issues important to developing economies, conflicts elsewhere dominated the sidelines: European leaders raised concerns about the U.S.’s new peace plan for Ukraine, saying it needed “additional work” and warning proposed limits on Ukraine’s armed forces could leave it vulnerable, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed concern over the U.S. military buildup near Venezuela.