South Africa scored an important diplomatic victory for multilateralism during its presidency of the G20.
US President Donald Trump ordered a boycott of the 2025 summit in Johannesburg and announced last week that he would ban South Africa from attending the 2026 summit in Miami. He said his actions are in response to South Africa’s domestic policies. Technically he has the power to do so but they are contrary to the norms and values of multilateralism. These hold that states which may have bilateral policy issues also share collective interests. G20 countries all have shared concerns with growth and development.
Before Trump, the US took a leading role in support of the G20. And the decision for the US to preside in 2026 was taken by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden. Trump has criticised South Africa for its policy support of diversity, equity and inclusion, climate change and land reform, and for the killing of white farmers, briefly and controversially justified in his third executive order on 7 February 2025.
The G20 is not an institutionalised treaty organisation, but a forum to build consensus and warn of problems ahead. That so many of the multilateral financial and other institutions attended the Johannesburg summit was important.
Historically, the rise of multilateralism has sought to replace the conflict-plagued attempts to achieve multipolarity. As it is an inherently unstable balance of power among a few hegemonic major powers.
Eurasia expert Anne Applebaum, in her 2025 book Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, contends with evidence that despite past differences today autocrats help each other, economically, politically and with weapons. Russia and China are foremost in her analysis with Ukraine and Taiwan priorities. Democracies, Applebaum argues, are in a global struggle with autocrats. A complementary geopolitical argument appears in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs by Professor Sally Paine, “By Land or by Sea: Continental Power, Maritime Power, and the Fight for a New World Order”.
Africa too, is cursed by too many strongmen and not enough strong institutions, but at least these have been mostly conflicts within, rather than among nations, although major external powers have played a disruptive role.
The strategic mission of South Africa, the only African member of the G20 and the first to be an annual president, was to build the necessary consensus for multilateral support to reduce the global economic inequality that limits the growth and development of poor countries, especially in Africa. Trump’s boycott may have opportunity costs, but further research and analysis is needed.
South Africa acknowledged the US sovereign right to boycott the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, and banning South Africa from attending next year’s summit in Miami. But are these actions legitimate according to custom and the evolving protocols of the G20?
South Africa clearly doesn’t think so. Absent the US, South Africa skilfully engineered consensus among the 19 key negotiators, or sherpas, to produce a multilateral consensus focused on the ways and means to overcome growing disparities in global wealth. The 2025 “Leaders Declaration” was only a declaration. But differences of national interest were overcome by consensus, not conquest.
The danger of a multipolar world order is that it could tempt strongmen to overreach, as Adolf Hitler did in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and Hideki Tojo did in a bid to dominate Asia. For the moment Trump holds power over the continental US, but so far at least, has failed to bully the much smaller sovereign nation of South Africa.
His most recent attempt, denying South Africans or its President access to the 2026 G20 Summit in Miami violates G20 protocol but is technically his right. Resolving this issue could keep G20 diplomats busy for months, when they should focus on ways and means to implement some of the 14 substantive promises in the “Leaders Declaration”. In the event, my guess is that a compromise will be reached with South Africa being represented in Miami but the country’s President stays away.
The UK has agreed to preside over the G20 in 2027 and South Korea in 2028. Both are democracies that support multilateralism, despite Britain leaving the EU and the threats of a North-South Korean conflict.
According to recent US polling Trump is faltering politically. His efforts to transform America from a democratic multilateralist nation to a “hard power” regional hegemon with global interests may not last, although most voters have little interest in foreign affairs. What may matter more is that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Trump have had close financial and other ties for many years. But even Russia and other autocratic governments attending the G20 2025 supported South Africa’s effort to forge a multilateral consensus declaration.
But it is also worth recalling that normally multilateral agreements take time but are resilient. In creating the UN in the aftermath of two world wars a multilateral consensus was quickly reached to create an international treaty institution to prevent a third world war. But while succeeding so far in that strategic mission, UN membership since 1945 has soared almost fourfold to nearly 200 sovereign members. Yet only 20 of them, the G20, now account for 85% of the wealth. A consensus on UN reform remains elusive, but a new consensus on securing global growth and development to deal with rising inequality through the G20 process, as South Africa demonstrated, is a step in the right direction.
A return to the war-prone multipolar balance of power that Trump apparently endorses, along with autocratic leaders, makes little sense.
Democracy at home and multilateral negotiations abroad will test our political resilience and ability to act collectively. As with democracy, multilateralism is endless and complex, but South Africa demonstrated at the G20 Summit that it can and should be peaceful, popular and enabling. DM