As South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa convenes the Group of 20 summit in Johannesburg, two things are likely to be on many minds: the empty chair and the spirit of ubuntu.
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Wikipedia defines the ubuntu philosophy as encompassing “the interdependence of humans on one another and the acknowledgement of one’s responsibility to their fellow humans and the world around them”. For the purposes of South Africa’s hosting of the G20 summit, that Zulu term means multilateralism – anathema to US President Donald Trump’s “America first” philosophy.
The chair next to the G20 host normally seats the incoming chairman, in this case, Trump – but he has declared a US boycott. “I don’t want to hand over to an empty chair, but the empty chair will be there,” said Ramaphosa in Soweto last week.
Trump’s stated reason is the unsubstantiated claim of “white genocide” in South Africa: “Afrikaners…are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” he wrote on social media: “No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue.”
The true reason is that Trump’s passionate preference for deal-making unilateralism is deeply at odds with the G20’s preference for cooperation and multilateralism. Or in Ramaphosa’s terms, ubuntu.
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It also does not help that South Africa’s G20 chairmanship – following in the footsteps of previous hosts Indonesia, India and Brazil – focuses on addressing climate change, reducing poor countries’ debt burdens, financing energy transitions and ensuring that the rush for critical minerals benefits producers. The United States has reportedly indicated it would veto any G20 mention of climate change.