Ramaphosa secures papal blessing for G20 values, while Trump (yet again) dumps on SA

Special envoy Mcebisi Jonas spent months restructuring a relationship between SA and the Holy See to secure the meeting on Saturday, 8 November, between Pope Leo XIV and President Cyril Ramaphosa and help ensure that the cardinal of the Catholic Church in SA, Stephen Brislin, begins the process to invite the head of the Catholic Church to South Africa.

Brislin is a member of the College of Cardinals, the Pope’s closest body of advisers.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump issued a social media post banning all US officials from attending the G20 Summit in Johannesburg on 22 and 23 November, because, he falsely claimed, “Afrikaners … are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.”

US Vice-President JD Vance was to have attended the summit, and his planned visit to South Africa, together with his wife, Usha, and young family, had taken months to prepare.

As J Brooks Spector reports here, the US embassy in South Africa was thrown into disarray by its principal’s intemperate post, in which he confused South America with South Africa.

Government sources said Vance’s advance team had already made most of the arrangements, and South Africa was still awaiting clarity on what would happen.

The Daily Maverick’s Trump Tracker reveals that this was the 15th attack on SA by the US leader or his representatives in 2025.

While conservative lobbyists in South Africa tried to besmirch their country at the weekend using Trump’s post, Ramaphosa and the G20 team met with Leo, gaining papal support for South Africa’s G20 agenda of equality, solidarity and sustainability.

The pope, with a following of 1.4 billion Catholics, is arguably the most influential American (with dual citizenship of Peru) in the world, although Trump claims that mantle. Leo and Ramaphosa met and agreed on the need to summon a new global spirit of common humanity. (Ramaphosa’s statement after the meeting is here.)

“It was a moment of recognition and alignment about the peaceful resolution of conflicts, solidarity with those in need and advocacy for climate justice. It was a recognition of common values and to strengthen bilateral ties with the Vatican,” said Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya.

Ramaphosa was not at Pope Francis’s funeral in April, which representatives of 142 of 193 UN member states attended, including 63 heads of state and 26 heads of government. The weekend meeting with Leo was an opportunity to reset an important relationship.

Middle powers 

While SA’s start to its G20 presidency almost a year ago met with US broadsides, the meeting of leading countries next month has broad support, notably from the middle powers.

The middle powers are influential countries that are not superpowers and include major Southeast Asian nations, the UAE and larger Middle Eastern countries, the EU, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

In a world where multilateralism is under attack, these countries support institutions of global governance and trade, and most favour peacemaking.

Magwenya said SA was expecting 67 heads of state to attend the summit. “The summit will go ahead. The world will continue engaging. It [Trump’s latest attack] has no implication at all,” he said.

“Notwithstanding the attacks, we remain positively disposed to the US. They have participated in a number of meetings.”

The two-day heads of state meeting is largely ceremonial, as most of the work has already been done in well over 100 multilateral meetings held throughout the year.

The support for the G20 Summit isn’t by accident — it was preceded by energetic shuttle diplomacy at the highest levels.

In October, Ramaphosa visited Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam and Indonesia, and attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit as a high-level guest. He also visited Switzerland two weeks ago.

Deputy President Paul Mashatile has bolstered African Union support, while International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola was in London for the FT Africa Summit and accompanied Ramaphosa on his visit to the Vatican.

The full ministerial and G20 SA team now heads to the G7 in Canada, the final stop ahead of the broader global gathering in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23.

In a whip-around of embassies of the G20 countries, Daily Maverick’s lead geopolitics writer, Peter Fabricius, found broad support for the G20 and its progressive values of solidarity, equality and sustainability. This is the polar opposite of the rising conservatism and the raw market orientation of the US and its allied countries (an increasingly diminishing pool).

Fabricius reported that the US, Argentina and the UAE (which does not support the focus on renewable energy) may be stumbling blocks to a consensus being reached at the summit.

The recent launch in Johannesburg by Professor Joseph Stiglitz of the global inequality report and other key issues flag a progressive political agenda that Trump’s US was always going to oppose. Inequality is likely to be a mantlepiece topic and will inflame the US administration’s opinion even further.

The social summit — a people’s gathering as opposed to a political meeting — takes place in Birchwood, Johannesburg, a few days ahead of the heads of state meeting, and will focus on debt and the cost of capital.

While South Africa’s G20 presidency places it at the crossroads of competing global interests, its diplomacy remains anchored in pragmatism, not partisanship, according to Lamola.

Speaking during a keynote interview at the FT Africa Summit in London on 21 October, Lamola’s message on foreign policy was: “We are not in any position to choose anyone, whether it is the US or China or any other. We need all international partners to support our development, so we are not going to take a position that favours anyone.”

Posting on X in response to Trump’s broadside, Lamola debunked claims of an “Afrikaner genocide”.

He wrote that there were 225 farm attacks between April 2020 and March 2024 — 101 of those killed were current or former workers, many of whom were black, while 53 were farmers, most of them white. DM