JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday that the declaration from this weekend’s Group of 20 summit reflected a “renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation”, concluding a meeting that pitted him against his US counterpart.
Ramaphosa, who hosted the Johannesburg summit, successfully pushed the declaration through, addressing issues such as the climate crisis, even though the United States objected and boycotted the event.
Speaking at the closing ceremony, Ramaphosa said the declaration demonstrated that world leaders’ “shared goals outweigh our differences.”
US President Trump skipped the Nov 22–23 summit, citing allegations which have been comprehensively falsified that South Africa’s Black-majority government mistreats its white minority population.
Despite US objections, the declaration tackled issues including the climate crisis, debt relief, and clean energy.
Trump had also opposed South Africa’s plan to assist developing nations in transitioning to clean energy, lowering their burdensome debt costs, and coping with weather disasters caused by climate change.
Nevertheless, Ramaphosa managed to achieve consensus among the attending leaders, except for Argentina, which did not object to the declaration being issued without its approval.
As the first G20 summit held in Africa, the joint declaration contained language that has long been disliked by the US administration.
The document emphasized the severity of climate change and the importance of adaptation, praised ambitious renewable energy targets, and criticized the high debt service charges faced by poorer countries.
The summit occurred amid tensions caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, which have strained the transatlantic alliance, and followed unsuccessful climate negotiations at COP30 in Brazil, where oil-producing and high-consuming nations blocked references to fossil fuels as a driver of the crisis in the final declaration.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Sunday that both the G20 and COP30 summits showed that multilateralism was very much alive.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz noted that the US was mentioned only briefly at the G20 summit and played a minor role as new global connections are being formed and the world reorganizes itself. “It wasn’t a good decision for the American government to be absent. But that’s something the American government has to decide for itself,” he said.
