South Africa delivered at the G20, Trump delivered a tantrum

South Africa has just pulled off one of the most ambitious G20 cycles in recent memory. It delivered a presidency that centred industrialisation, the Global South’s development agenda, climate justice and a reimagined multilateralism that is long overdue. It convened heads of state, hammered out a declaration adopted by all members and anchored Africa’s priorities at the centre of a forum that has historically spoken about the continent rather than with it.

This was a moment of global leadership.

And yet, even as South Africa was closing the summit, US President Donald Trump took to social media to deliver his own “foreign policy” intervention – one part fantasy, one part theatre, and entirely divorced from how global governance works. He declared, with customary bravado, that the US would bar South Africa from participating in “America’s G20”. It would be funny if it weren’t so infantile. But more dangerously, it exposes an ever-deepening hostility to rules, institutions and the global commons.

Let’s be clear: the US cannot unilaterally disinvite a member state from the G20. The G20 is not America’s backyard barbecue where the host decides which neighbour to snub. It is a voluntary, consensus-based collective of the world’s largest economies. Membership is fixed and decisions are made jointly. No single country, not even the US, has the authority to expel another member or “host its own exclusive G20.” Trump’s announcement is therefore not just procedurally wrong. It is legally and diplomatically impossible.

Read more: What Does the G20 mean for Ordinary South Africans?

But this is the essence of the Trumpian worldview: if the rules do not bend toward his will, then the rules must be declared fake, illegitimate or unnecessary. He did this with Nato. He did it with the World Health Organization. He did it with climate agreements. And now, to the world’s largest economic forum, he brings the same impulses: revenge politics, personal grievance, dominance and a belief that foreign policy is a transaction to be closed, not a relationship to be shaped.

South Africa’s G20 presidency, by contrast, embodied the opposite ethic: an insistence that global development cannot be advanced by humiliation, exclusion or unilateral force. It championed industrial capacity for the Global South, fairer global finance, better debt treatment, critical minerals beneficiation and new trade pathways. It anchored Africa’s voice, not as a beggar but as a co-author of global solutions. The contrast is stark. And perhaps that contrast is what offends Trump most.

His other threat was equally revealing: to cut off all “payments and subsidies” to South Africa because he disapproves of its domestic and foreign policies. Again, rhetoric divorced from reality.

Here are the facts.

Over the past four years, the US has provided between 17% and 21% of South Africa’s HIV-Aids funding, largely, for staffing, testing and programme support. South Africa, on the other hand, has funded about 76% to 80% of its entire HIV response, including more than 80% of all antiretroviral drugs used in the national programme. In the same period, the US has not provided “subsidies” to South Africa in any meaningful economic sense. It provides targeted development assistance, not welfare cheques. Even before the 2025 freeze, US foreign aid to South Africa averaged about $350-million to $450-million per year, a tiny fraction of South Africa’s national budget and overwhelmingly channelled through NGOs, international partners and Pepfar.

So when Trump thunders about cutting off subsidies, he is threatening to stop doing something the US was not doing in the first place.

This is less policy than performance. But performance has consequences.

Every time the US behaves in ways that undermine multilateralism, it creates a vacuum. And vacuums are rarely left unfilled. China, which has spent two decades building influence through trade, infrastructure, credit and diplomatic engagements across Africa, does not need to “win” Africa. It only needs the US to step back so it can step forward. Trump’s belligerence is therefore not just anti-South Africa, it is anti-American strategic interest. It hands Beijing the easiest geopolitical gift imaginable: a disillusioned, insulted partner looking for reliable alternatives.

American businesses stand to lose deals. American diplomats stand to lose relationships. American universities stand to lose partnerships. American policymakers stand to lose African trust. And American voters stand to lose influence in a region that will shape the future of global growth, minerals, food security and geopolitical alignment.

South Africa’s G20 year demonstrated that the world is tired of being treated as a stage for superpowers to rehearse their insecurities. It proved that leadership can come from unexpected places, and that consensus, not coercion, can still drive meaningful global outcomes.

South Africa should respond firmly but calmly. It should expose the factual inaccuracies. It should insist on the integrity of multilateral processes. And it should continue building relationships with countries that see Africa not as a prop in someone else’s ideological drama, but as a partner in shared prosperity.

Trump may believe he can single-handedly rewrite the rules of geopolitics with threats and hashtags. But the G20 is bigger than him. The world is bigger than him. And South Africa’s leadership – rational, principled and globally resonant – is already proving that.

In the end, America does not weaken South Africa by lashing out. It weakens itself. And it strengthens the very actors it claims to fear.

If Trump wants to understand what real global leadership looks like, he need only rewatch South Africa’s G20 presidency.

It was everything his foreign policy is not: constructive, inclusive, visionary, and anchored in the belief that the world works best when no nation appoints itself emperor. DM

Redi Tlhabi is a South African journalist, producer, author and a former radio presenter.