08/12/2025
VERY WISE DECISIONS
Lobbying countries to boycott US G20 would be ‘unconstructive’ - presidency
The South African government says it will not lobby other countries to boycott the US G20 summit after President Donald Trump decided to bar Pretoria from participating.
Instead, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya has said South Africa would want all the G20 members to fully participate but make sure that the declaration made at the Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg finds resonance despite Trump’s misgivings.
Boycotting the US G20, Magwenya said, would be counterproductive and South Africa was not keen to see an entire G20 year being wasted simply because the country was not invited.
“We don’t want to do that. That’s not for us to do. In fact it would be unhelpful if the entire year goes to waste and the G20 is collapsed,” said Magwenya.
“So countries must continue to participate and they must continue to advance key developmental issues, notwithstanding the discomfort of the US over those issues. So we are not going to encourage a boycott and lobby countries to boycott.”
He said, unlike Trump, who tried to get other countries to snub the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg, Ramaphosa does not want to “engage in that unwise behaviour” of boycott politics.
“If anything. We will encourage all the members to fully participate and to utilise their rights to advance the issues that are important and that have been widely agreed on in Johannesburg, regardless of whether the US is comfortable with those issues or not,” said Magwenya.
“It’s not in our DNA to embark on unconstructive or unhelpful diplomatic campaigns, ours is for the world to remain engaged and seized with all the key issues that were surfaced and ventilated at the Johannesburg summit, regardless of whether the US is comfortable with those issues or not. That’s what we would like to see other members do in our absence from that G20.”
Magwenya also said Ramaphosa was not expecting G20 members to publicly denounce the US in support of South Africa, but would rather they register their “displeasure” over the decision to block it from being part of the activities in the US.
“Our expectation is not that G20 member countries must come out publicly and defend South Africa, we expect that all the members must rather register their displeasure with the US in defence of multilateralism and the spirit and purpose of the G20,” he said.
“At the very least, we expect that all the G20 members directly register their discomfort with the US about this type of unilateralism in a multilateral platform.”
Magwenya said South Africa is not hard-pressed about Trump’s decision to block the country from participating as they had been expecting the decision.
“We’re not overly concerned because we are already in discussions with France with respect to carrying through the momentum of the South Africa-led G20 to the G7. We are already in discussions with the UK to ensure that a number of key issues that feature prominently in the Johannesburg declaration are carried through to the 2027 G20,” said Magwenya.
“We already anticipated that there would be resistance from the US with respect to accepting the Johannesburg declaration, and so we started lobbying beyond the US G20. When President Trump announced that we would not be participating, that affirmed our anticipation. We are going to continue engaging other partners to ensure that the substance of the Joburg declaration remains in the G20 agenda beyond the US.”
Magwenya said Ramaphosa was well aware that the G20 countries were having their own battles with Trump over trade tariffs and that it would be unfair to expect them to publicly denounce him, which could further hurt those negotiations.
“We also appreciate that a number of countries are in a somewhat precarious position with the US. If it’s not trying to negotiate a trade deal, it’s trying to get US co-operation particularly with Europe seeking US support and co-operation over the Ukraine peace plan,” he said.
“And so we appreciate all those complexities. Therefore, we would not have unreasonable expectations that countries must pick up our fight. We know how to stand up for ourselves, we’ve been standing up for ourselves, we’ve been defending ourselves against misinformation out of Washington, against Israeli-peddled propaganda and against local right-wing peddled lies. We can defend ourselves.
“What we have said is that countries must defend multilateralism as a principle because it’s South Africa today, who else will be next? So that’s what we are expecting countries to do and that they do it in a manner that is constructive and comfortable for them.”
