A Summit That Smells of Rooibos and History
The air over Johannesburg tastes faintly of dust, diesel and braaied meat — the ordinary smells of a city that never quite sleeps. In the weeks leading to the world’s most watched economic confab, the skyline below the Nelson Mandela Bridge shivers with preparations: barricades, flags, and a thousand small crews turning convention space into global theater.
Next weekend, the Group of 20 — the forum that accounts for roughly 80% of global gross domestic product and two-thirds of international trade — will convene in this metropolis. It’s the first time the G20 will be held on African soil. That fact alone has given the summit a different flavor: less of a recycled choreography of power and more of a long-denied invitation to the continent to speak for itself.
“This is not just a photo-op,” says Zanele Mokoena, a public policy researcher in Soweto. “For many Africans, it is a kind of return: return to a table where decisions have been made without us for so long.” Her voice carries a mix of hope and impatience.
Old Alliances, Fresh Faces
Among the invited guests is Ireland — not a G20 member, but welcomed by the South African presidency. Ireland’s prime minister, Micheál Martin, will lead his delegation, a nod to deeper ties than current trade figures alone can explain.
During President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent visit to Dublin, he sought out a piece of shared history: the women who in 1984 refused to sell South African grapefruit at Dunnes Stores. Their protest helped prompt Ireland to become the first Western country to ban goods from the apartheid state. Ramaphosa met these former shop workers at Áras an Uachtaráin and paid tribute to their moral courage.
“We were small and stubborn,” one of the Dunnes women told an Irish paper during a reunion after the meeting. “But sometimes stubbornness changes the world.”
Ramaphosa, who also once worked as a weapons inspector during the Northern Ireland peace process, emphasized bonds beyond commerce. “South Africa is Ireland’s largest trading partner in Africa,” he noted, adding with a wry smile that Ireland shipped roughly €46 million worth of whiskey to South Africa last year — an image that made room for both spirits and spirit.
Who’s Coming — and Who Is Not
The list of arrivals reads like a global sampler: leaders from Germany, France, Italy, and the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will be present. China and Russia will send senior delegations, though neither will dispatch their top leaders — a cautionary dance influenced by legal and diplomatic constraints. South Africa, as host, faces a potentially awkward legal obligation: the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges, complicating any possibility of the Russian president setting foot on African soil.
And then there is the conspicuous absence. The United States — normally a near-constant presence at summits of this kind — will not attend at the leaders’ level. In an unprecedented snub, the White House has decided to boycott the leaders’ meeting. For summit veterans, this is not simply a scheduling hiccup; it is a rupture in the G20’s consensus engine.
“A G20 without the U.S. leaders will feel like a choir without its tenor,” offered Pauline Bax from the International Crisis Group’s Africa Program. “The mechanics of consensus are harder to operate when the biggest economy sits out.”
Politics on Full Display
The reason for the boycott is emphatic and polarizing. President Donald Trump has publicly condemned South Africa’s hosting of the summit, citing allegations about violence against white farmers and what he describes as “land theft” — claims that have been widely dismissed in South Africa as exaggerated or inaccurate.
“It’s a total disgrace,” he wrote on social media, accusing South Africa of failing to protect minority farmers and pledging that no U.S. leader would attend “as long as these human rights abuses continue.” Mr. Trump later cut U.S. aid to South Africa and announced a refugee programme directed specifically at white South Africans — moves that inflamed opinion on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ramaphosa has pushed back. “Their loss,” he said of the American absence. “The U.S. is giving up the very important role it should be playing as the world’s largest economy.” The South African government has repeatedly pointed out that most victims of violent crime in the country are Black, and that the bulk of farmland remains owned by a white minority — statistics that complicate the narrative being pushed abroad.
In an unexpected twist, a group of white Afrikaner intellectuals — academics, clergy and journalists — issued a public letter calling the U.S. narrative a misuse of their identity for foreign political ends. “We are not pawns in America’s culture wars,” they wrote. “We are South Africans, still striving toward a more just future.”
Beyond the Headlines: Minerals, Markets and Memory
If the politics are loud, the real engines under discussion are quieter and more consequential. Africa’s subterranean wealth is no secret: cobalt, nickel, lithium, rare earth elements — these minerals are the raw material of the green transition, the digital economy and modern defense technologies. As global demand for critical minerals skyrockets, the continent sits at a crossroads that echo the imperial “Scramble for Africa” of the 19th century.
“There’s a danger that Africa remains a quarry,” warned Nqobile Xada of Resources Futures in Africa. “Without a unified strategy, the continent risks being locked into supplying raw materials, while value-added processing happens elsewhere.” The summit gives African leaders and allies an audience — and a chance — to argue for local beneficiation and industrialization, not just extraction.
Observers also highlight the symbolic importance of hosting. For the African Union and for many national leaders, the G20 is a theater to project sovereignty. “We are taking our destiny into our hands,” Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, the African Union Commission chairperson, told reporters in New York, underlining a sentiment of firm intent.
What Could It Mean for Ordinary People?
Walk into the Johannesburg Market and you’ll hear another story: vendors bargaining in Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and English; stalls piled high with dried fish, maize, and bright fabric; talk of power cuts and rising food prices. For most citizens, the G20’s abstract lines — interest rates, debt architecture, trade rules — translate into plumbing, pensions, and the price of chicken.
“If the summit spares us nothing but pretty speeches, we will know the distance still to travel,” said Lerato Maseko, who runs a small tailoring shop near Newtown. “We need infrastructure and cheaper electricity. We need jobs.” Her hands, habitually measuring invisible hems, gesture the impatience of a person who wants outcomes, not optics.
- G20 reach: roughly 80% of global GDP, touching economic policy worldwide.
- South Africa’s lead role: an attempt to refocus talks on “solidarity, equality, sustainability.”
- Trade tidbit: Ireland exported about €46 million in whiskey to South Africa last year.
So What Should You Be Watching?
Look for three things as the summit unfolds: first, whether leaders can agree on concrete financing for climate adaptation and for Africa’s infrastructure; second, whether any new commitments are made to local processing of minerals rather than raw exports; and third, whether diplomatic ruptures — the U.S. boycott, the Kremlin’s absence — leave gaps in the G20’s ability to act collectively.
And ask yourself: who is the G20 for? Is it a club that protects the status quo, or an engine for change? The Johannesburg summit will not answer that question in a single statement. But for a fortnight, at least, the continent will be listened to in a way it rarely has at this level — and that matters.
“We are not asking for charity,” Ramaphosa told a local crowd in a recent speech. “We ask for partnership.” The words are a reminder that this meeting, for all its security fences and sterile banquet halls, is in the end about people — farmers and factory workers, shopkeepers and scholars, the grapefruitsellers of the past and the tech workers of the future. How global leaders choose to hear them may define the era to come.
