Key topics:
- Ramaphosa’s G20 chairmanship highlights South Africa’s foreign policy struggles.
- US officials boycott G20, diminishing its significance and creating diplomatic tension.
- No agreements reached at key meetings, raising doubts about the G20’s future relevance.
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By R.W. Johnson___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Ramaphosa’s government had laid great hopes on how its chairmanship of the G20 would enable South Africa to score a major international success and show off its moral leadership to the world by crusading for the indebted Global South. This was, after all, the first time that an African country had chaired and hosted the G20. Instead the whole occasion risks falling into farce and irrelevance – and what has been highlighted thus far is that South Africa is way out of its depth in world affairs and that it doesn’t even seem to understand its own position.
The US Boycott
Things started badly with Trump’s angry attack and then Marco Rubio’s deliberate boycott of the meeting, saying he had no wish to “coddle anti-Americanism”. This advertised to the whole world that the ANC government had foolishly provoked American wrath. Even rich middle powers like Britain and France would go to great lengths to avoid doing such a thing, but for a poor (almost bankrupt) African country to do so is remarkably stupid. It puts South Africa in a small group of America’s declared enemies along with Iran, North Korea and almost no one else.
Rubio’s boycott, followed immediately by a similar boycott by the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, greatly devalued the whole G20 exercise. Foreign and finance ministers attend meetings largely because of the opportunity to button-hole important foreign actors whom they need to speak to about other matters. The news that neither Rubio nor Bessent would be there immediately caused others to ask themselves whether it was worth their own while to attend. So three other foreign ministers failed to show up.
There were last minute attempts to tart up at least the bits of Jo’burg delegates were most likely to see but it was impossible to disguise the fact that South Africa’s major city was near the point of collapse, especially since there were both power cuts and water cuts.
The Foreign Ministers’ meeting: No Agreement
Strains were immediately apparent at the opening foreign ministers’ meeting. Instead of talking about the problems of the Global South, as Ramaphosa wanted, there were angry exchanges over Ukraine and at one point Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, actually walked out. Ultimately no joint statement was issued (as is the norm), merely a record of discussions – reflecting the fact that no agreement had been reached. The South Africans, desperate to create at least a semblance of unity, then insisted that all the foreign ministers show togetherness by posing for a collective “family photo”. But none of the Western foreign ministers would agree to be photographed with Lavrov.
The Boycott Expands
Attention then moved to the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Cape Town. This all but collapsed. With Bessent absent, the Japanese finance minister, Katsunobu Kato, decided to stay home in Tokyo. His Chinese counterpart did likewise, and the EU’s Economic Commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, decided to stay in Brussels. The finance ministers of India, Canada, Brazil and Mexico also cried off: so much for BRICS solidarity and the solidarity of the Global South….Minister Godongwana tried to sound sympathetic about his fellow finance ministers’ “scheduling challenges” but South Africa was now fighting desperately to salvage the meeting. Ramaphosa had hoped to use it to exert pressure on the rich countries to help out with Africa’s debt problems but now few of the relevant finance ministers were even present and the meeting coincided with both the US and the UK cutting their aid budgets.
The question now was whether the G20 still had any relevance. Already there was speculation about the planned meeting of all the heads of the G20 governments in South Africa in November. In theory this meant that Trump would come to South Africa so that Ramaphosa could hand over the G20 chairmanship to the Americans. To sweeten the pill Ramaphosa had written to Trump offering him all the pomp of a State Visit. But thus far Trump had made no reply. The clear possibility loomed that Trump would snub Ramaphosa and the G20 to boot. In which case the first African meeting of the G20 would see the organisation collapse altogether.
South Africa’s Confused Mis-steps
What then followed was a whole series of foreign policy mis-steps which left many wondering if Ramaphosa really understood the game he was playing in. First there was Ramaphosa’s address to the finance ministers’ meeting:
“The erosion of multilateralism” he said, “presents a threat to global growth and stability. At this time of heightened geopolitical contestation a rules-based order is particularly important for managing disputes and resolving conflict. Multilateral co-operation is our only hope of overcoming unprecedented challenges, including slow and uneven growth, rising debt burdens, persistent poverty and inequality, and the existential threat of climate change.”
Yet for the last several years the ANC – and foreign minister Naledi Pandor in particular – has been cheering on the brave new world of multipolarity, which is based precisely on the erosion of the old Washington consensus of powerful multilateral institutions and a rules-based international order.
Moreover, Ramaphosa himself had played a critical role in this when he intervened to reverse his foreign minister’s initial condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The most basic rule of the international order was – and is – the UN Charter’s commitment to the territorial integrity of all states. Yet by refusing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Ramaphosa was refusing to uphold this part of the UN Charter, even though South Africa had sworn to do so in becoming a UN member.
As the world becomes more multipolar, the more multilateral institutions are bound to be undermined and the more individual states will thumb their noses at the rules-based order – which is exactly what Russia has done. So Ramaphosa’s speech directly contradicted the major principles of South African foreign policy.
As if to emphasise this utter confusion over its own foreign policy South Africa then voted for contradictory resolutions at the UN, one denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the other refusing to do so.
The next strange initiative was an article co-authored by Ramaphosa in Foreign Policy, a serious journal based in Washington DC which was the usual all-out ANC attack on Israel and its backer, the US. For such an article to appear in Washington is bound to be taken by the Trump administration as a bold-faced doubling down on Pretoria’s siding with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. In the context of the current tensions between Washington and Pretoria this was exactly the opposite of what was needed to calm the situation.
Doubtless, the article was ghosted by some pro-Palestinian militant but the fact that it appeared under the names of Ramaphosa and the premier of Malaysia bespeaks a careful arrangement over a period of time, presumably directed by the Presidency or the foreign ministry. One cannot but wonder whose work this really was and whether its authors realised that it was bound to further envenom Pretoria-Washington relations. Was this indeed its deliberate intent ? Is there really no one in the Presidency or at the foreign ministry who realises the hideous unwisdom of such an article appearing at this time ?
An Inevitable Meeting which is Far from Inevitable
As if to confirm this confusion Ramaphosa then announced that a South African delegation would go to Washington, not in order to explain themselves but because
“We want to go and do a meaningful deal with the United States on a whole range of issues. It’s inevitable that we will get together and do a deal. It’s an interconnected world – and we’ve got to deal with each other, whether we like it or not…”
This too sounds unrealistic. There is an inevitability about the US and China getting together and trying to work out deals because they are both so overwhelmingly powerful that such contacts are unavoidable. But this is far from being true about South Africa which is, in Washington’s eyes, such a minor player that it can easily be brushed aside or ignored.
Thus far the boycott of G20 meetings by US ministers and Trump’s refusal to respond to Ramaphosa’s messages suggests that the Trump administration has decided to cold-shoulder Pretoria and take steps to punish it for its anti-US stance. It may even single out South Africa for exemplary punishment so as to show other countries what happens to a state that sets out to poke Washington in the eye. This is, after all, how Washington has treated Cuba. But open the door and welcome in a South African delegation for frank talks ? There’s absolutely nothing inevitable about that.
The Failure of Ramaphosa’s Game Plan
Meanwhile the pantomime of the G20 finance ministers’ meeting continued to its ragged conclusion. This was the key meeting from Ramaphosa’s point of view if he was really to get the rich countries to agree to solve Africa’s debt problems.
To help push this agenda the Presidency had carefully arranged for eight former African heads of government, led by Nigeria’s formidable Olusegun Obasanjo, to fly in to Cape Town where with great flourish they signed the Cape Town Declaration, otherwise known as the African Leaders’ Debt Relief Initiative. This made all the usual points about Africa’s debts and the interest rates charged on them all being too high. The only solution, the declaration argued, was for there to be a global overhaul of the world’s financial system so as to write off most of these debts in order to align matters with the goals of the AU’s Agenda 2063.
In addition South Africa had earlier arranged that both Nigeria and Egypt should attend all future G20 meetings and it had also invited all five of Africa’s regional economic groupings to attend the Cape Town meeting. The calculation was clearly that this increased African presence would make it harder for the rich world to ignore Africa’s demands – and that the coup de grace would be delivered by the eight African former heads of government, whose appeal would make Africa’s demands morally irresistible.
By this stage the only major finance ministers present were mainly from the EU and UK, all of them currently hard-pressed with major domestic financial constraints. Indeed, they had taken advantage of the conference to confer with one another about setting up a common European Defence Fund in order to accelerate their re-armament efforts. This was, for all of them, a far more urgent and immediate concern than Africa’s drearily familiar debt problems. It is doubtful if any of them had ever even heard of the AU’s Agenda 2063 and they certainly didn’t feel compelled to align themselves with its goals.
Indeed, Ramaphosa had miscalculated. The assumption was that the surprise arrival of eight former African heads of government would create a certain amount of shock and awe: these were the big guns. In fact the European finance ministers were most unlikely to be impressed by a group of African political has-beens, most of whom they couldn’t even name. They were also not naive and could see perfectly well that Ramaphosa’s stage management was intended to stampede them into agreement. So debate was extremely sharp, with the obvious remarks being made about African countries borrowing more than they could afford to repay and then expecting others to pay their debts. Even South Africa’s Enoch Godongwana characterised the debate as “extremely robust”.
The Last G20 ?
At the end there was no agreement and therefore no signed communique, just a record of discussions. With that Ramaphosa’s whole strategy for the G20 meeting had failed – a major diplomatic defeat for South Africa – and the question now was whether anyone would try to pick up the pieces. But the same question was now in everyone’s mind: was this to be the last G20 ? Could such an institution even survive into the harsh new Trumpian world ? The situation was summed up diplomatically by Bianca Botes, the Global Director of the giant Chicago hedge fund, Citadel: “The future cohesion and effectiveness of the G20 as a forum for global economic governance are now of serious concern.”
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