'South Africa will not be bullied': Ramaphosa after US snub to G20 Summit

As South Africa gears up for the G20 Summit, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday that the country will not be bullied, with the United States boycotting the international event in Johannesburg this weekend. The remarks came after Washington demanded that South Africa not issue the traditional joint leaders’ statement after the meeting.

While 40 nations will be participating in the summit, US President Donald Trump said that there will be no American representation, expressing differences in both international and domestic policies. The move was seen as a wider American retreat from multilateralism amid a rattled global order.

“It cannot be that a country’s geographical location or income or army determines who has a voice and who is spoken down to,” Ramaphosa told delegates at a curtain-raiser event in a clear reference to Washington. “There should be no bullying of one nation by another,” he said in an address to a gathering of civil society groups ahead of the November 22-23 summit.

The US remains adamant on its boycott

Meanwhile, the US embassy made it clear that it would not attend the summit. In a note to South Africa, the American embassy said that its G20 priorities “run counter to the US policy views and we cannot support consensus on any documents negotiated under your presidency.”

It said that the United States “opposes issuance of any G20 summit outcome document under the premise of a consensus G20 position, without U.S. agreement.” It is pertinent to note that South Africa is the first African nation to host the G20 Summit. South Africa maintained that the United States’ absence from the event negated its role.

South Africa still plans to issue a joint statement

The African nation’s Foreign Minister, Ronald Lamola, said Pretoria would press ahead with a leaders’ declaration. “We will not be told by anyone absent that we cannot adopt a declaration or make any decisions at the summit,” he said in an address after Ramaphosa had spoken.

South Africa chose “ Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability ” as the theme of this year’s G20 Summit, which comprises 19 countries and two regional bodies, the European Union and the African Union. What makes the G20 significant is the fact that its members account for 85 per cent of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population. Addressing their closing event, Ramaphosa repeated: “We need to be sitting at the table as equals … without any bullying of the other.”

“In the past, most of us in the Global South were colonised; we were not even allowed to be in the room. And we’ve now been arguing that we would like to be in the room,” the South African leader averred.

With Inputs from AFP.