JOHANNESBURG — The Group of 20 nations will make a joint declaration at the end of their summit in Johannesburg this weekend despite warnings against that from the United States, South Africa’s president said Thursday.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the summit host country will “not be bullied” by pressure from the Trump administration to water down any final decisions.
He told reporters that the first G20 summit in Africa was moving forward without the U.S., which is boycotting the two-day meeting of world leaders that opens Saturday over Trump’s claims that Ramaphosa’s government is violently persecuting a white minority.
A South African G20 ambassador said this week that the U.S. had sent diplomatic communication to South Africa advising that that “there should be no declaration adopted” at the summit because the U.S. was not there and therefore there would be no consensus.
Instead, the U.S. wants a toned-down statement from South Africa only to cap the summit, which is a culmination of more than 120 meetings that Africa’s most advanced economy has hosted since it took over the G20’s rotating presidency for this year.
“We will have a declaration,” Ramaphosa told reporters Thursday, pushing back against the U.S. “The talks are going extremely well. I’m confident we are moving towards a declaration, and they are now just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.”
“Without the United States, the whole process of the G20 is moving forward. We will not be bullied. We will not agree to be bullied.”
Trump has repeatedly targeted South Africa for criticism since he returned to office. He held a tense meeting with Ramaphosa at the White House in May, when he confronted South Africa’s leader with baseless claims of widespread violence against Afrikaners in South Africa.
The U.S. president has repeated his claims in the leadup to the G20 that Ramaphosa’s Black-led government is pursuing racist anti-white policies against the Afrikaner white minority.
Trump’s allegations have been widely rejected, but the U.S. president cited them when he said the U.S. government would boycott the summit in South Africa’s biggest city.
The U.S. will take over the rotating presidency of the G20 from South Africa and Ramaphosa has previously said he will have to pass it to Trump’s “empty chair” in Johannesburg, though he said he would talk to Trump after the summit.
The G20 is a bloc made up of 19 nations, including the richest but also the top developing economies. The European Union and the African Union are also members.
South Africa, which is the first African nation to hold the rotating presidency, is hoping to use its summit to make progress on issues especially affecting poor countries. That includes mitigating the impact of climate change and weather-related disasters, easing debt burdens for developing countries and confronting global wealth inequality.
The U.S. has previously derided South Africa’s priorities for the group, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipping a G20 foreign ministers meeting in February and dismissing South Africa’s priorities as being about diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change.
Rubio said he would not waste U.S. taxpayer money on that agenda.
Other leaders are also skipping the G20 summit, including China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Argentina’s Javier Milei, but they have sent delegations to represent them.
“The only country that is not in the room is the United States and, of course, is their choice not to be in the room,” Xolisa Mabhongo, a South African ambassador to the G20, told national broadcaster SABC this week.
Imray and Magome write for the Associated Press.
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