President Donald Trump’s suggestion that global affairs should be managed through a “G2” between the US and China reduces world politics to a bilateral negotiation. It undermines the principle of interdependence. It revives the belief that history can be shaped by duopoly, the same way Europeans carved out the world through their colonial wars aggression. It turns the whole world into an American province.
Fortunately, China does not want such a world. Her new global governance initiative is anchored in solidarity. It speaks of shared development and common security. It treats equity as a stabilising force rather than a diplomatic burden. It recognises that pandemics, supply chain fractures and climate shocks cannot be contained by two powers acting alone. The 21st century demands breadth, to build a global community with a shared future.
This is why the G20 remains a useful platform. It is imperfect yet viable. It is slow yet stabilising. It offers something a “G2” cannot. It offers the recognition that legitimacy grows as participation widens, which is why South Africa has invited other regional structures to be part of the 2025 Summit outreach, something she has successfully done when hosting BRICS summits.
Across its history the G20 has echoed a commitment to cooperative health governance.
At the Hamburg Summit (2017) leaders declared that they would “continue to strive for resilient health systems” and support countries “in implementing national plans for universal health coverage”. In Osaka (2019) they promised “better preparedness against health emergencies”. In Rome (2021) they agreed to strengthen global health architecture with a focus on equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. India’s presidency in New Delhi (2023) went further. The Delhi Declaration insisted that global arrangements must “reduce fragmentation, reinforce governance and strengthen financing” for health emergency preparedness.
These statements reflect a simple truth. Viruses do not stop at high walls. They do not queue at immigration counters. Human interaction is the natural order of our species. Disease follows that rhythm. A virus travels faster than suspicion. It moves through trade, tourism, labour and care. Health crises driven by climate change behave in the same way. Heatwaves, vector shifts, crop failures and water insecurity all cross borders. No passport officer can halt a mosquito blown across a frontier. No patrol can restrain air currents that carry dust, spores or heat.
This logic of interdependence makes a global forum such as the G20 indispensable. It makes a “G2” implausible. In fact, I suspect the only other country worth bringing to the table is Russia, which will create a “G3”. That’s a perfect end game for a US president who admires only two world leaders: Putin and Xi.
South Africa’s theme for the 2025 G20 is Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability. For Trump this theme is proof of what he calls a left agenda. In his framing it is an attempt to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. He sees it as a strategy to weaken sovereign control of natural resources. He claims that environmental movements are conspiring to limit the use of oil and coal. Yet the theme is neither ideological nor conspiratorial. It reflects the lived realities of the South. It recognises that global risks are shared. It recognises that long-term stability requires cooperation and fairness. It accepts that sustainability is not a luxury. It is a condition for survival.
Trump’s boycott of South Africa and his accusation that the country is not important and is committing a “genocide” against white Afrikaners of European ancestry reveals a familiar reflex. It seeks to delegitimise plural global leadership. The charge is reckless. It insults memory. It attempts to isolate a state whose diplomatic instinct is multilateral rather than deferential. In fact he is interfering in another country’s domestic affairs by demanding that laws designed to correct the imbalances of the apartheid past be reversed because they discriminate against the white perpetrators and beneficiaries of colonial dispossession and apartheid.
The same instinct appeared during the G20 health preparatory meetings. US officials disrupted the consensus. They argued, as they did in earlier G20 and G8 cycles, that universal health coverage is unaffordable. They prefer a user-pays model that has strained their own system. They treat solidarity as a cost.
China did not. Her position echoed Hangzhou (2016) where leaders called for inclusive and interconnected development as a basis for global stability.
Earlier G8 declarations pointed in the same direction. Hokkaido (2008) affirmed the vital importance of strengthening health systems. Genoa (2001) backed the creation of the Global Fund as a multilateral instrument to expand access to lifesaving treatment. Each declaration carried a message that the US now seems willing to forget. Shared investment in health is strategic foresight.
The world will not wait
The world is entering a new period. USAID, CDC and Pepfar have been curtailed. This continues a trend first visible in the later G8 years when enthusiasm for global health financing began to cool.
But the world will not wait. The Global South is adjusting. Governments are digging deeper within national means. They are levering private capital. They are strengthening regional alliances. They recognise that sovereignty is not achieved through dependency.
America’s scientific expertise cannot be erased. Private foundations remain active. Yet no region can shape its future around external benevolence. The new global health era is one where Southern capability replaces Northern subsidy. Sovereignty becomes practical. It requires local manufacturing, regional procurement, stable financing and predictable governance. It demands that people once supported by donors be sustained by their own states.
Sovereignty does not reject cooperation. It reshapes it. It creates reciprocity where hierarchy once dominated. It ensures that African, Asian and Latin American states negotiate as equals rather than petitioners.
South Africa’s G20 presidency builds on the legacies of Indonesia (2022), India (2023) and Brazil (2024). Each widened the circle of voice. Each insisted that global governance must reflect the demographic and economic realities of the present rather than the anxieties of the past.
South Africa is helping to lead that conversation. It is reminding the world that solidarity is strategic. It is showing that capability is the path to sovereignty. It is strengthening the case that global challenges demand global responsibility rather than duopolistic ambition.
The world does not need a G2 or a G3. It needs a G20 that speaks for the many. It needs a Global South that is assertive, coherent and prepared. It needs a future shaped by shared responsibility.
And South Africa is doing its part. DM