The office of President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Thursday that South Africa will take a “commercial break” from the Group of 20 (G20) forum over the coming year because the rotating precedency has passed to the United States under President Donald Trump.
“About this time next year, the UK will be taking over the G20 presidency. We will be able to engage meaningfully and substantively over what really matters to the rest of the world. For now, we will take a commercial break until we resume normal programming,” Ramaphosa spokesman Vincent Magwenya wrote on social media.
South Africa may indeed be sidelined from the G20 for at least a year, but not because Ramaphosa wants a break. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Poland has been invited to join the G20 – and will apparently be taking South Africa’s seat.
“We will be inviting friends, neighbors, and partners to the American G20. We will welcome the world’s largest economies, as well as burgeoning partners and allies, to America’s table. In particular, Poland, a nation that was once trapped behind the Iron Curtain but now ranks among the world’s 20 largest economies, will be joining us to assume its rightful place in the G20,” Rubio wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
“Poland’s success is proof that a focus on the future is a better path than one on grievances. It shows how partnership with the United States and American companies can promote mutual prosperity and growth. The contrast with South Africa, host of this year’s G20, is stark,” he continued.
Rubio argued that South Africa’s current government has frittered away the “strong institutions, excellent infrastructure, and global goodwill” inherited after the fall of apartheid, replacing them with “redistributionist policies that discouraged investment and drove South Africa’s most talented citizens abroad.”
“Racial quotas have crippled the private sector, while corruption bankrupts the state,” he charged. “The numbers speak for themselves. As South Africa’s economy has stagnated under its burdensome regulatory regime driven by racial grievance, and it falls firmly outside the group of the 20 largest industrialized economies.”
Rubio stood behind President Trump’s allegations of racism, divisiveness, and corruption against Ramaphosa’s government and noted that South Africa’s “relationships with Iran, its entertainment of Hamas sympathizers, and cozying to America’s greatest adversaries move it from the family of nations we once called close.”
“The politics of grievance carried over to South Africa’s Presidency of the G20 this month, which was an exercise in spite, division, and radical agendas that have nothing to do with economic growth,” he said.
“South Africa focused on climate change, diversity and inclusion, and aid dependency as central tenets of its working groups. It routinely ignored U.S. objections to consensus communiques and statements. It blocked the U.S. and other countries’ inputs into negotiations. It actively ignored our reasonable faith efforts to negotiate. It doxed U.S. officials working on these negotiations. It fundamentally tarnished the G20’s reputation,” he complained.
Rubio said that for all of these reasons, “President Trump and the United States will not be extending an invitation to the South African government to participate in the G20 during our presidency.”
“There is a place for good faith disagreement, but not dishonesty or sabotage,” he declared.
South Africa’s presidency of the G20 was a disaster, with several top world leaders skipping the summit in Johannesburg, Ramaphosa making false statements to cover his embarrassment, and a clumsy effort to force out a “closing statement” at the beginning of the summit as an anti-American political stunt.
Rubio is objectively correct about South Africa’s economic decline under the governments that followed Nelson Mandela. South Africa is no longer in the top 20 world economies, as G20 membership implies; it is on the verge of falling from the top 40. Poland, meanwhile, has risen to the 20th spot.
The next G20 summit will be held in December 2026 in Miami, Florida, to coincide with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Poland is very happy to be invited, having argued for some time that its trillion-dollar economy qualified it for membership.
“We have the right to do this not only as one of the 20 largest economies in the world, but also as a country that presents a political and intellectual argument, because we are the country that has successfully transformed from a planned economy to a free economy,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in September.
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