What’s at stake in South Africa’s big test?

From 22 to 23 November, South Africa plays host to arguably its most important international event since the 2010 FIFA World Cup, when world leaders and tens of thousands of delegates head to Johannesburg for the G20 Summit, the conclusion of the country’s year-long presidency of the geopolitical bloc.

On arrival at OR Tambo International Airport, travellers are greeted by a large photograph of a beaming President Cyril Ramaphosa, framed by the national flag and the insignia of the G20, exhorting visitors to enjoy their stay in the “beautiful country”. But few delegates can expect a relaxing vacation taking in the glories of Table Mountain and the wildlife-filled drives of the Kruger National Park.

At the end of a year defined by global trade tariffs, geopolitical mistrust and ongoing wars that have sundered the international community, the summit is a critical moment for the diplomatic corps of the world’s 19 major economies – including the US and China – plus the European Union and African Union – to meet face-to-face and stake out some common ground.

Driving into Johannesburg, delegates are further greeted with billboards illustrating a set of scales and advertising the three major themes chosen by South Africa to guide the policymakers in their discussions: solidarity, equality and sustainability.

Non-alignment and multilateralism: the test

While the scales are intended to represent the global balance of justice, they might equally illustrate the diplomatic balancing act that South Africa faces as host of an often-fractious bloc. For a country that has found itself straddling geopolitical faultlines between East and West and the Global North and Global South, while assuming (not always seamlessly) a leading role in African affairs, hosting the G20 will be a key test of its long-term commitment to non-alignment and multilateralism.

Long before the summit, there were already ominous signs that the new US administration was preparing to extend its wilfully disruptive influence to the event. President Donald Trump will not attend in person. His secretary of state Marco Rubio boycotted a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg in February – accusing South Africa on Twitter of peddling a G20 agenda defined by the administration’s pet hates: “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and climate change.”

Yet while the summit is expected to be a severe test of South Africa’s diplomatic nous, experts say that the G20 also offers a rare chance for South Africa to put its interests – and those of the African continent and the Global South at large – at the centre of the international agenda, all while promoting the country as a major investment destination.

It’s an opportunity, says Steven Gruzd, head of the African governance and diplomacy programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs, that the country’s government is grasping with both hands. “They’re definitely taking it seriously; they’ve put a lot of effort into it. It’s prestigious for Africa, and they’ve been very careful to try to create some continuity between the last four presidencies – which were Indonesia, India, Brazil and now South Africa. So developing world priorities – things like fairer global justice, reformed global governance institutions, more voice for Africa at international forums, a fairer multipolar world order – all of those things fit very neatly into South Africa’s foreign policy.”

Amplifying Africa

As early as his State of the Nation address in February 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged to use the first ever African presidency of the bloc to “place Africa’s development at the top of the agenda when we host the G20 in 2025”. By February, when Ramaphosa addressed the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg, that pledge had been crystallised further. “Africa is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies and faces unique challenges, such as the impact of climate change, development needs and the effects of global trade dynamics.

“The Summit’s location underscores the need for African voices to be heard on critical global issues, like sustainable development, the digital economy and the shift toward green energy. It is a great opportunity to promote greater collaboration between African nations and the rest of the world.”

Ramaphosa also says that the forum offers a chance to highlight Africa’s debt concerns, challenge the continent’s inflated cost of capital – it costs the continent more to borrow money for critical infrastructure projects than other regions – and to promote its role as a major future supplier and potential source of value addition in the critical minerals value chain.

He has launched an African Panel of Experts to work on recommendations addressing impediments to growth and development in Africa, including the cost of capital, in addition to launching the G20’s Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Wealth Inequality, chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. There will be further room for discussion of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and debate around the methodologies used by international credit ratings agencies when judging African risk.

Music to African ears

All of this is music to the ears of African countries, many of which in the past have not felt adequately represented on the global stage by their often wealthier and more visible neighbour.

Christopher Vandome, a senior research fellow with Chatham House’s Africa programme and global economy and finance programme, says that placing Africa at the heart of the G20 offers an opportunity for South Africa to tie itself more closely to a continent which historically “doesn’t necessarily like South Africa speaking on its behalf”.

“It’s a really important way of cementing the relationship with the African Union. The politics of the African Union doesn’t really reflect the politics of Southern Africa – its much more dominated by East African and West African voices, and this is an important opportunity for South Africa to showcase the African agenda and priorities for Africa, in what is being done in quite a delicate and sensitive way. This is not South Africa representing Africa, this is South Africa being a conduit and a platform to allow Africa to speak to the world.”

Gruzd agrees that the G20 could represent a new dawn in relations between South Africa and the continent at large. “I don’t know whether Africa yet accepts the voice of South Africa – they are still guarded, still wary. We’ve had the horrible xenophobic violence that has flared up from time to time, and that has really hurt relations – I think to a much greater extent than South Africa actually acknowledges and recognises. But they are going full bore at this and giving it a good shot and taking it seriously, and I think there’s renewed confidence.”

That diplomatic push extends to firming up partnerships with non-African nations of the Global South. South Africa will be the last of four Global South nations to host the G20 following Indonesia (in 2022), India (2023) and Brazil (2024).

“This is a completion of the presidencies of the democratic nations of the Global South… it’s about a legitimate voice of democratic nations of the Global South having their view, putting their priorities around the reform of global governance, better representation of Global South partners within the governance institutions, and a stronger representation of the developmental agenda,” says Chatham House’s Vandome.

Cas Coovadia, sherpa for the B20, the G20’s official business forum, says that the 30 business recommendations submitted to the bloc from a league of eight taskforces have focused on traditional themes of common concern. This year, however, particular attention has been paid to the concerns of African and Global South nations.

“There are all sorts of recommendations supporting open economies, free trade and multilateralism – but this is also an opportunity for a reset. Multilateral institutions need to reflect the changing global economics and there needs to be better representation from the South.”

Trump tries to spoil the party

That is an agenda with which, by and large, the United States is not on board.

On 8 November, Trump said that it was a “total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa” and confirmed that no US government officials will attend. He repeated discredited claims about mass killings of Afrikaners that he previously aired in an infamous Oval Office meeting with Ramaphosa in May.

In recent months, South Africa has attracted particular US ire, not least for initiating action at the International Court of Justice against US ally Israel for alleged genocide during its war in Gaza: the court ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent any acts contrary to the 1948 Genocide Convention. South Africa has been hit with tariffs of 30% by the US.

“I think they’ve been a little bit upset by the Americans, who have different priorities now – [Marco] Rubio didn’t come for the foreign ministers meeting, [US secretary of the treasury Scott] Bessant didn’t come for the finance ministers meeting, Trump’s not going to come, which is maybe not a bad thing,” says Gruzd.

“But I think South Africa has been a little disappointed at the US spoiling the party.”

Still, South Africa will be desperate to avoid an overt diplomatic rupture and is likely to downplay the US absence.

Busisiwe Mavuso, CEO of Business Leadership, the organisation that represents South Africa’s largest corporations, says that South African jobs depend on smooth relations with the Americans, pointing to jobs lost in the automotive and agricultural value chains by the lapsing of the US’s tariff-free African Growth and Opportunity Act.

“I don’t think we can ever underestimate the importance of US relations and the partnership as the South African community. That is why our government is hard at work trying to find a way to reset the relationship. The US has mattered a lot for South Africa and the broader African continent, and will continue to matter.”

Solidifying partnerships

While the summit is likely to see South Africa and other nations delicately tiptoeing around the US elephant in the room, there is still an opportunity to cement valuable partnerships with other Western partners, who show little interest in following the US.

“What’s happening in the States is problematic, [but] it’s opened space for new relationships and new alliances. Colleagues in Europe, Canada and elsewhere are saying they believe there’s a possibility of opening up a different type of discussion because – simplistically – you’ve been tariffed, we’ve been tariffed, let’s talk to each other,” says Coovadia.

In October a group of European Union diplomats published an opinion article in South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper in which they pointedly referred to themselves and South Africa as “reliable and predictable partners committed to forging a new era of co-operation in the pursuit of peace, development and prosperity… While some have turned their attention elsewhere, the EU not only remains engaged, we are doubling down with our support and are here to stay… We have fully supported South Africa’s G20 presidency and its theme of solidarity, equality and sustainability throughout this important year,” they wrote.

Vandome says other countries spy an opportunity to engage with South Africa – and Africa and the Global South at large – in the face of US disinterest. “There’s been a big announcement by the EU at the beginning of the year, and again in the last few weeks, around increasing EU engagement and prioritisation of South Africa.

“The UK similarly sees opportunities there, as do Australia and Canada. There’s a sense of ‘OK we get it, the Americans are not coming’ – this can’t be interpreted as a major snub on South Africa and the G20 in a way that ripples though everybody else. With America tending at a lower level, it’s actually seen by others as an opportunity to engage and double down.

“South Africa will be looking to secure various other bilateral agreements with other countries and use it as part of its economic policy, bringing investors in, showcasing what they’ve got and trying to secure economic relationships.”

Defining success

Amid the tangled geopolitics, what will G20 success look like for South Africa? For those working with the B20, the goals are perhaps clearer cut.

“Given the current geopolitical situation, given the uncertainties around multilateral trade, and given the shift in global economics and the separation into different blocs, we think that both the G20 and the B20 can bring governments from the biggest economies together to actually discuss these things,” says Coovadia.

Mavuso agrees that bringing governments together to discuss the global trade agenda in an era of tariffs and dislocation offers a potential win in itself.

“Building trade relations is not a business-to-business conversation, it’s a government-to-government conversation. We can have conversations but we’re also dependent and reliant on our political principals to actually come up with the relationships that will make the business-to-business part work,” she says.

For the G20 at large, defining success might be trickier. Given the potential spoiler role of the US, a closing communiqué that brings all the parties together in agreement and amity might be a bridge too far. Instead, says Vandome, agreements on smaller agenda items would be a positive.

“We’ve got to perhaps look at this in comparison to other G20s. What is it that other G20s have tried to achieve and been able to achieve? Does the G20 ever achieve some of these things?

“South Africa has from the outset put in place quite an ambitious agenda. Even if there’s no declaration, some agreements and commitments around debt and the availability of capital for development in Africa will be a positive thing. Some kind of agreement around supporting exploration or engaging more deeply around value addition for minerals will be a good thing. There’s stuff that can be achieved without a comprehensive or unitary declaration at the end.”

Ultimately, says Gruzd, South Africa can stick to its guns and leverage the support of other G20 nations to pass important agenda items for Africa and the Global South – even if commitments in a communiqué prove elusive.

“South Africa is not going to step back from what it believes in this. I think it has a lot of support from the other G20 countries to stay firm and, yes, we are going to talk about the climate, a fairer global system and global governance reform. They’ll have to manage the Americans. If the G20 goes back to its core issues which are ultimately financial and economic, then I think it can make some progress.

“You’ve got to remember these are discussion forums, they are not decision-making forums. So I think one should be modest in the expectations. What will success look like? Everyone being safe, the right kind of positive headlines, the meetings going without a hitch, a big presence of the big delegations.”