Heads of states pose for a family photo following the first plenary session of the G20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Saturday.
Misper Apawu/Pool AP
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Misper Apawu/Pool AP
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — This weekend’s G20 Leaders’ Summit in South Africa was unusual for several reasons. The first summit on the African continent was also the first time the U.S. had boycotted the summit of the world’s largest economies.
It was also unprecedented in that the group of disparate nations agreed to a declaration at the meeting’s start rather than its conclusion, and that there was no ceremonial handover between the outgoing and incoming G20 chairs.
The Trump administration boycotted the event after Trump falsely accused the South African government of confiscating white-owned land and allowing the killing of white Afrikaners. The U.S. also objected to what it considered the summit’s DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — agenda.
Despite what some officials and analysts said were Washington’s best attempts to derail the event, South African Minister of International Relations Ronald Lamola was upbeat as it wrapped up on Sunday at a convention center not far from the famous Johannesburg township of Soweto.
“In a nutshell … this has been a great success for our country,” said Lamola.
Earlier Sunday, host President Cyril Ramaphosa had declared the meeting closed, banging a ceremonial gavel on the table.
“This gavel of this G20 summit formally closes this summit and now moves on to the next president of the G20, which is the United States, where we shall see each other again next year,” he said.
Usually he’d be expected to hand that gavel over to the leader of the country taking over the rotating chairmanship of the G20, but President Trump was not in attendance. Washington had asked that Ramaphosa hand over to a junior embassy official, but the South Africans refused.
“I mean, it’s a breach of protocol. It has never happened before and it was never going to happen for the first time here in South Africa,” Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told reporters.
The handover will now take place on Monday between South African and U.S. officials of similar rank.
Joint declaration
The U.S. had also told the South Africans that they should not issue a joint declaration at the summit’s close, and that if they issued something it should only be called a “chair’s statement.”
However, Ramaphosa, who said ahead of the event “we will not be bullied,” announced at the meeting’s opening on Saturday that consensus had been reached and a joint statement was issued without the input of the U.S.
People walk by a large screen TV where South African President Cyril Ramaphosa holds a wooden gavel as he officially closes the G20 leaders’ summit, in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sunday.
Jerome Delay/AP
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Jerome Delay/AP
While G20 declarations are not binding, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly criticized the move, accusing Ramaphosa of “refusing to facilitate a smooth transition of the G20 presidency” and said Trump looked forward to “restoring legitimacy” to the group next year. He has said he plans to hold the event in Florida.
The declaration contained the kind of DEI language disliked by the Trump administration, stressing the threat of climate change, the importance of achieving “gender equality” and the debt burden faced by poorer countries.
Argentina — whose libertarian president, Javier Milei, is a strong Trump ally and did not attend the summit in solidarity with Trump but sent other representation — voiced some objections to the language but ultimately the declaration was still issued.
World leaders in attendance thanked South Africa for its G20 leadership, with French President Emmanuel Macron giving Ramaphosa a warm hug. But while Ramaphosa lauded the event as a win for multilateralism, Macron noted the divisions at the summit were still apparent.
And while Ramaphosa said South Africa had used the summit to put “the Global South at the heart of the agenda” and “prioritized the issues that matter most to developing economies,” it was conflicts in other parts of the world that dominated on the summit’s sidelines.
European leaders put out a statement raising concerns about the U.S.’s new peace plan for Ukraine, which some see as favoring Moscow, saying it needed “additional work” and adding that proposed limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack.
Separately, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed concern Sunday over the U.S. military buildup near Venezuela.
