When US President Donald Trump declared that South Africa “shouldn’t even be” within the G20 after which took to Truth Social on November 7 to announce that no American official would attend this yr’s summit in Johannesburg on account of a so-called “genocide” of white farmers within the nation, I used to be not stunned. His outburst was not an exception however the newest expression of an extended Western custom of disciplining African sovereignty. Western leaders have lengthy tried to close down African company by means of mischaracterisations, from branding Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba a “Soviet puppet” to calling anti-apartheid chief Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”, and Trump’s assault on South Africa falls squarely into that sample.
As Africa pushes for a stronger voice in international governance, the Trump administration has intensified efforts to isolate Pretoria. South Africa’s rising diplomatic assertiveness, from BRICS enlargement to local weather finance negotiations, has challenged conservative assumptions that international management belongs completely to the West.
On February 7, Trump signed an govt order halting US assist to South Africa. He alleged that the federal government’s land expropriation coverage discriminates towards white farmers and quantities to uncompensated confiscation. Nothing could possibly be farther from the reality. South African legislation permits expropriation solely by means of due course of and compensation, with restricted exceptions set out within the Constitution. Trump’s claims ignore this authorized actuality, revealing a deliberate desire for distortion over reality.
Soon after, the administration amplified its rollout of a refugee admissions coverage that privileged Afrikaners, citing as soon as once more discredited claims of presidency persecution. What is obvious is that Washington has intentionally heightened tensions with Pretoria, trying to find any pretext to forged South Africa as an adversary. This selective compassion, prolonged solely to white South Africans, exposes a racialised hierarchy of concern that has lengthy formed conservative engagement with the continent.
Yet, for months, South African officers have firmly rejected these claims, pointing to judicial rulings, official statistics, and constitutional safeguards that present no proof of systematic persecution, not to mention a “genocide” of white farmers. Indeed, as impartial specialists repeatedly confirmed, there’s no credible proof by any means to help the declare that white farmers in South Africa are being systematically focused as a part of a marketing campaign of genocide. Their rebuttals spotlight a fundamental imbalance: Pretoria is working by means of verifiable knowledge and institutional course of, whereas Washington depends on exaggeration and ideological grievance.
At the identical time, as host of this yr’s G20 Summit, Pretoria is utilizing the platform to champion a extra cooperative and equitable international order. For South Africa, chairing the G20 isn’t solely symbolic, however strategic, an try to broaden the affect of nations lengthy excluded from shaping the foundations of worldwide governance.
Trump’s G20 boycott embodies a transnational campaign formed by Christian righteousness. Trump’s rhetoric reduces South Africa to an ethical backdrop for American authority relatively than recognising it as a sovereign accomplice with official aspirations. The boycott additionally mirrors a wider effort to discredit multilateral establishments that dilute American exceptionalism.
This stance is rooted in an extended evangelical-imperial custom, one which fused theology with empire and forged Western dominance as divinely sanctioned. The perception that Africa required Western ethical rescue emerged within the nineteenth century, when European missionaries declared it a Christian responsibility to civilise and redeem the continent. The wording has modified, however the logic endures, recasting African political company as a civilisational error relatively than a official expression of sovereignty. This moralised paternalism didn’t disappear with decolonisation. It merely tailored, resurfacing at any time when African nations assert themselves on the world stage.
American evangelical and conservative Christian networks wield vital affect contained in the Republican Party. Their political and media ecosystem, that includes Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), routinely frames multilateral establishments, international assist, and worldwide legislation as subordinate to American sovereignty and Christian civilisation. These networks form not solely rhetoric however coverage, turning fringe narratives into international coverage priorities.
They additionally amplify unproven claims of Christian persecution overseas, significantly in nations similar to Nigeria and Ethiopia, to legitimise American political and army interference. Trump’s fixation with South Africa follows the identical script: a fabricated disaster crafted to thrill, galvanise, and reassure a conservative Christian base. South Africa turns into one other stage for this efficiency.
In this distorted narrative, South Africa isn’t a constitutional democracy performing by means of sturdy, impartial courts and establishments. Instead, Africa’s most developed nation is stripped of its standing and portrayed as a flawed civilisation in want of Western correction. For conservative Christian nationalists, African decision-making isn’t autonomous company however a supervised privilege granted solely when African selections align with Western priorities.
By casting South Africa as illegitimate within the G20, invoking false claims of genocide and land seizures, and penalising Pretoria’s ICJ case with assist cuts, Trump asserts that solely the West can outline international legitimacy and ethical authority, a worldview anchored in Christian-nationalist authority. Trump’s campaign is punishment, not precept, and it seeks to discourage African autonomy itself.
On many events, I’ve walked the streets of Alexandra, a Johannesburg township formed by apartheid’s spatial design, the place inequality stays brutally vivid. Alexandra squeezes a couple of million residents into barely 800 hectares (about 2,000 acres). A good portion of its casual housing sits on the floodplain of the Jukskei River, the place settlements crowd slim pathways and fragile infrastructure. Here, the implications of structural inequality are unmistakable, but they vanish fully inside Trump’s constructed disaster.
These communities sit only some kilometres from Sandton, a spacious, leafy, and prosperous suburb that’s residence to a few of the nation’s costliest properties. The huge and entrenched gulf between these adjoining lands is actually a residing image of the profound inequality Trump is prepared to miss and legitimise as a worldwide norm, constructed on selective ethical outrage and racialised indifference.
In Alexandra, the battle for dignity, equality, and inclusion isn’t a spiritual American fantasy, however a sensible quest for the rights that apartheid and wider international injustice sought to disclaim. Their battle mirrors the broader international struggle towards constructions that focus wealth and energy in a couple of arms. They, too, deserve higher.
This is the human situation Trump’s pseudo-morality refuses to acknowledge. This is why South Africa’s international management issues.
Earlier this yr, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa commissioned a landmark G20 Global Inequality Report, chaired by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. It discovered that the world’s richest 1 p.c have captured greater than 40 p.c of latest wealth since 2000 and that greater than 80 p.c of humanity now lives in situations the World Bank classifies as excessive inequality.
The Johannesburg G20 Summit seeks to reform multilateral improvement banks, such because the World Bank, to confront a worldwide monetary system that sidelines growing nations and perpetuates financial injustice. While South Africa turns to recognised multilateral instruments such because the ICJ and G20 reform, the US has moved in the other way.
Under Trump, Washington has sanctioned the International Criminal Court, deserted key UN our bodies, and rejected scrutiny from UN human rights specialists, reflecting a Christian-nationalist doctrine that treats American energy as inherently absolute and answerable to nobody.
South Africa gives another imaginative and prescient rooted in international cooperation, shared duty, equality, and adherence to worldwide legislation, a imaginative and prescient that unsettles these invested in unilateral energy. The US recasts decolonisation as sin, African equality as disruption, and American dominance as divinely ordained. Trump’s assaults reveal how deeply this worldview nonetheless shapes American international coverage.
Yet the world has moved past colonial binaries. African self-determination can not be framed as immoral. Human rights are common, and dignity belongs to us all.
The views expressed on this article are the authors’ personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial coverage.
