US President Donald Trump’s declaration that South Africa “should not even be” in the G20, followed by his announcement on Truth Social that the United States would boycott the Johannesburg summit due to an alleged “genocide” of white farmers, did not come as a shock. Rather, it reflects a persistent Western tradition of disciplining African sovereignty through distortion, exaggeration and punitive action.
Trump’s remarks echo a long history in which Western leaders have undermined African political agency: Patrice Lumumba was once branded a “Soviet puppet”, and Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”. Today, South Africa finds itself in the same crosshairs as it asserts a more independent role in global affairs.
A Targeted Campaign Against South Africa’s Global Assertiveness
As South Africa pushes for greater representation in global governance, from its leadership in BRICS expansion to negotiations over climate finance, Washington under Trump has escalated efforts to isolate Pretoria.
On February 7, Trump signed an executive order halting all US aid to South Africa, claiming the country’s land expropriation policy discriminates against white farmers. Yet South African law only permits expropriation through due process and fair compensation, with narrow constitutional exceptions. Trump’s claims disregard established legal frameworks, relying instead on a narrative shaped by ideological grievance rather than fact.
The administration intensified this campaign by rolling out a refugee admissions policy favouring Afrikaners, again invoking the false narrative of state-sponsored persecution.
South African officials, however, have repeatedly provided judicial evidence, official statistics, and constitutional safeguards to debunk claims of any systematic violence or genocide against white farmers.
Weaponising Religion and Racial Fear
Trump’s boycott of the G20 is not only a diplomatic snub; it is part of a broader Christian-nationalist project that casts Western dominance as morally ordained and African autonomy as dangerous.
American evangelical and conservative Christian networks, deeply embedded in the Republican Party, exert major influence over this worldview. Their media ecosystem, from Fox News to CBN, regularly frames African and Global South decision-making as subordinate to Western authority. This narrative justifies US exceptionalism while undermining multilateral institutions such as the ICC and the UN.
Trump’s fixation on South Africa fits this pattern: a fabricated crisis crafted to energise a conservative Christian base, even at the cost of erasing South Africa’s democratic institutions.
A Distorted Crisis That Ignores Real Inequality
Trump’s narrative not only distorts South Africa’s political reality but also ignores the structural inequality that shapes daily life for millions.
In villages like Alexandra, where more than a million people are packed into a floodplain along the Jukskei River, inequality remains a stark legacy of apartheid , mere kilometres away from the wealth of Sandton. These are the very inequalities that South Africa seeks to address, yet they disappear entirely in Trump’s constructed moral outrage.
The selective compassion for white South Africans, contrasted with indifference to broader systemic injustice, reveals a longstanding racialised hierarchy of concern in conservative Western politics.
South Africa’s Global Leadership Challenges Western Dominance
As host of the 2025 G20 Summit, South Africa is championing reforms aimed at restructuring global financial systems that marginalise the Global South. A landmark G20 Global Inequality Report, commissioned by President Cyril Ramaphosa and chaired by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, found that the top 1 percent of the world’s richest have captured over 40 percent of all new wealth since 2000. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of humanity lives under high inequality.
South Africa’s push for change threatens a system that historically concentrated power in Western capitals , a system Trump defends as divinely sanctioned.
An Alternative Vision for Global Cooperation
South Africa offers a vision rooted in:
- multilateral engagement
- shared responsibility
- equality among nations
- respect for international law
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has sanctioned the ICC, withdrawn from UN bodies, and dismissed human rights oversight — all in service of a worldview where US power is absolute and unaccountable.
By painting South Africa as illegitimate, invoking debunked genocide narratives, and punishing Pretoria through aid cuts and diplomatic boycotts, Trump reasserts a doctrine that only the West can decide what is moral and legitimate on the global stage.
A New Global Reality
But the world no longer operates under colonial binaries. African sovereignty cannot be dismissed as a moral flaw or geopolitical inconvenience. South Africa’s leadership, grounded in cooperation, justice, and equality, represents a challenge to outdated hierarchies.
Trump’s attacks ultimately expose a deeper truth: African autonomy threatens a worldview that still views Western dominance as destiny.
And that is precisely why South Africa’s voice matters.