By Enyichukwu Enemanna
South Africa has condemned US President, Donald Trump for rejecting Pretoria’s agenda of promoting solidarity and helping developing nations adapt to weather disasters, transition to clean energy and reduction in their excessive debt costs at the just concluded G20 Summit in Johannesburg.
Pretoria said the bloc is not about Washington but about the 21 members, in response to the Trump’s decision not to attend the meeting or send a representative.
“The multilateral platform cannot be paralyzed on the basis of the absence of someone who was invited,” South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told reporters.
“This G20 is not about the US. It’s about all the 21 members of the G20. We are all equal members of the G20. What it means is that we need to take a decision. Those of us who are here have decided this is where the world must go,” he stated.
The declaration addressing the climate crisis and other global challenges was unilaterally adopted at the November 22—23 meeting after it was drafted without US input in a move a White House official called “shameful.”
South Africa says despite US opposition, the declaration “can’t be renegotiated,” reflecting strains between Pretoria and the Trump administration over the event.
“We had the entire year of working towards this adoption and the past week has been quite intense,” a Ramaphosa’s spokesperson said.
Addressing the opening ceremony at the summit, Ramaphosa said: “There’s been overwhelming consensus and agreement that one of the other tasks we should undertake right at the beginning is to … adopt our declaration.”
“We should not allow anything to diminish the value, the stature and the impact of the first African G20 presidency,” he said.
Analysts say his bold tone was a striking contrast to his subdued decorum during his visit to the White House in August, in which he helplessly watched Trump accuse him of presiding over genocide of white farmers in South Africa, brushing aside Ramaphosa’s efforts to correct his facts.
Trump said US officials would not attend the summit because of allegations, widely discredited, that the host country’s Black majority government persecutes its white minority.
