South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, closed the G20 summit in Johannesburg by banging a gavel after rejecting a US proposal that the presidency be handed to a relatively junior embassy official ahead of next year’s summit in Florida.
South Africa presented the two-day meeting as a victory for multilateralism, but it was overshadowed by a US boycott. The US has repeatedly accused South Africa of discriminating against white-minority Afrikaners — a claim widely discredited. In his closing remarks Ramaphosa said: “We’ve met in the face of significant challenges and demonstrated our ability to come together, even in times of great difficulty, to pursue a better world.” He added: “This gavel of this G20 summit formally closes this summit and now moves on to the next president of the G20, which is the United States, where we shall see each other again next year.” That was his only reference to the absent US.
The G20 issued a declaration on Saturday stressing action on climate change and the need to achieve “gender equality.” The Trump administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement on the first day of his second term and has reversed a number of policies aimed at tackling sexism, racism and homophobia.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Ramaphosa had “refused to facilitate a smooth transition of the G20 presidency” and accused South Africa of “weaponising their G20 presidency to undermine the G20’s founding principles.”
South Africa had offered to arrange for an equivalent “junior” diplomat to formally hand the presidency to the US at the foreign ministry, saying it would breach protocol for Ramaphosa to hand it to the US acting ambassador. Foreign minister Ronald Lamola told reporters: “From us, the ball has moved. We are done. It’s up to them. If they want to come, we are available.”
The 2026 summit is scheduled for the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort, owned by the Trump Organization.
Argentina, whose president Javier Milei also skipped the summit, refused to endorse the declaration. Argentina’s foreign minister, Pablo Quirno, said the text “addresses the longstanding Middle East conflict in a manner that fails to capture its full complexity.”
The G20 communique said: “We will work for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ukraine, as well as ending other conflicts and wars around the globe.”
The G20 was founded after the 1999 Asian financial crisis with 19 nations and the EU; the African Union was added as a permanent member in 2023. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum were also absent. Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court, to which South Africa is a signatory, and Xi has delegated many international appearances this year to China’s premier, Li Qiang.
Reuters contributed to this report
