Who is the rogue state now after America’s G20 snub?

For months, the Trump administration – and some of its more excitable allies in Washington think-tanks and Congress – have sought to brand South Africa a “rogue state”: a nation supposedly aligned with terrorists, hostile to the West, and complicit in a mythical “genocide” against white Afrikaners. Yet when the G20 Leaders’ Declaration was issued this weekend, it was not South Africa left standing outside the global consensus. It was the US, whose president has chosen to isolate his country and sit apart from the world.

Why Donald Trump abruptly withdrew America’s delegation two weeks ago is anyone’s guess. It may have been something as petty as denying Vice-President JD Vance the chance to look statesmanlike among world leaders. Or perhaps it was yet another round of white grievance whispered into the president’s ear on the golf course at Mar-a-Lago by a South African friend.

His public justification came in the form of a familiar falsehood on Truth Social: “It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa. Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!”

This was followed by the astonishing claim that the rest of the world could not issue a statement without American permission. At the last minute, the US decided to send the Charges d’Affaires to the US embassy, a slight that even DA leader John Steenhuisen derided as “poor form”.

If this is global leadership, we are living in strange times indeed.

Far from suffering humiliation, the summit has been something of a triumph for President Cyril Ramaphosa and has burnished South Africa’s credentials as a leader of the developing world and of Africa.

The world’s leaders gathered in Johannesburg embraced an agenda of global solidarity: tackling inequality, climate change, gender-based violence and the suffocating debt burdens of poorer nations; seeking peace where wars still rage; and revitalising inclusive growth, trade and multilateralism. These priorities are so fundamentally at odds with the worldview of the current occupant of the White House that it is doubtful the US would have endorsed the declaration even if it had shown up.

It remains to be seen whether relations between Washington and South Africa can be salvaged, though it is clear that the South African government has grown weary of all the bullying.

A perfect storm of ideology, resentment and geopolitics

Since Trump’s re-election in 2024, South Africa’s already shaky relations with the US have taken a darker turn. Trump and his minions have railed about the alleged persecution of white Afrikaners and the supposed tyranny of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), taking their cue from the grievances of opposition groups in South Africa and white nationalist circles in the US.

What followed was a cascade of executive actions, including a sweeping cut to US aid for South Africa and a special race-based refugee programme for white Afrikaners.

Officials across the US government scrambled to align with the president’s fantasy. The “white genocide” narrative – ridiculed everywhere else in the world – flowed freely in Washington’s corridors of power. Efforts were even made in some quarters to examine whether the US should support an autonomous “Western Cape state” with a white and Coloured majority – a bizarre neo-apartheid project that would conveniently grant the US access to the Simon’s Town naval base without needing to negotiate with South Africa’s Black majority.

South Africa became collateral damage in a convergence of forces:

• The president’s proximity to a handful of aggrieved white South Africans;
• The administration’s ideological crusade against “DEI” – mirrored in its hostility to BEE;
• The surge of white Christian nationalism in the US;
• Think-tank narratives casting South Africa as anti-Western; and
• The broader American culture war spilling onto foreign policy.

While many in South Africa and the rest of the world viewed the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in January 2024 as principled, in Washington it was treated as proof that South Africa had joined an “axis of resistance” with China, Russia and Iran.

Pretoria’s warm relations with Beijing and the promotion of an expanded BRICS as an alternative to Western institutions led many in Washington to believe that South Africa had chosen sides – and not America’s.

In this climate, facts became irrelevant. South Africa’s policies were no longer evaluated through diplomatic logic but through America’s fiercely polarised domestic politics.

Ramaphosa attempted to repair the damage in his May meeting with Trump, accompanied not by ideological provocateurs but by respected white South African business leaders and golfers who calmly explained that “white genocide” simply did not exist. Their intervention helped dial down the hysteria. But by then, a new (equally false) narrative had already taken hold: that South Africa was not merely misguided but actively aligned with Iran, Hamas and America’s enemies.

Who is the rogue state?

South Africa is far from perfect. The government’s foreign policy is often muddled, its diplomacy occasionally tone-deaf, and the calibre of its representatives often mediocre. It has often failed to articulate a thoughtful and clear vision that resonates and reflects the values and interests of all South Africans.

But none of these flaws justifies the campaign of distortion and hostility emanating from Washington – and the constant belittling of its leadership.

So what then defines a rogue state?

Would it not include?

• Rounding up and exporting people without due process to prisons in foreign countries where they are subjected to torture;
• Threatening to annex neighbouring states, including allies;
• Murdering people on boats in international waters without evidence that they represent a threat;
• Upending the global trading system through indiscriminate and vindictive tariff wars;
• Withdrawing from agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord whose aim is the collective benefit of humanity;
• Unilaterally deploying military troops into urban centres to quell largely peaceful protests;
• Pardoning war criminals; and
• Diplomacy based on corruption and the enrichment of political and business leaders and their families.

On every one of these counts, it is not South Africa that fits the description of a rogue state.

As the G20 met this weekend, the US stood alone – isolated not by principle but by grievance, ideology and insecurity. It is a sobering moment: the world’s oldest democracy drifting towards the behaviour it once condemned in others.

So, the question practically asks itself: Who is the rogue state now?

And if the answer is uncomfortable, it is because the truth often is. DM

Phillip van Niekerk is the managing partner of Calabar Consulting, a risk consulting company specialising in Africa. The views expressed are his own.