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since the founding of G-20, had never held one of its summits on the African continent, the first occurred on November 22 and 23, when South Africa hosted the meeting that usually brings together the most powerful human beings on the planet. Africa has faced successive waves of European, American, Chinese and Russian colonialism. Cyrill Rapamophosa (Sowetho, 1952), current president of South Africa, obtained the headquarters of the G-20 and did everything possible to open a space to renegotiate, even minimally, Africa’s insertion into the global economy. The biography of the South African leader is in many ways an embodiment of the trajectory and contradictions of many members of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a student leader anti-apartheid since he was a student at Mphaphuli Secondary School. In 1967 he spent 11 months in solitary confinement for supporting the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo). He graduated as a lawyer from the University of South Africa. He was legal advisor to the South African Council of Trade Unions. He led the National Union of Miners. He participated on behalf of the ANC in the negotiation of the complex peaceful democratic transition. He became a businessman, currently he is the owner of McDonald’s South Africa and a partner in the mining company Lonmin. He became vice president. It was very hard with the Marikana mining strike. He became president of South Africa and then the presidency of the G-20.
The United States insisted on boycotting the summit for several reasons. At the beginning of the Trump administration, Elon Musk was one of the main promoters of the sabotage of South Africa. Amy Goodman interviewed Chris McGreal, correspondent for Guardian in South Africa (Democracy Now, 3/27/25), according to which Elon’s grandfather, named Joshua Norman Haldeman, migrated from Canada to South Africa in 1950, when the apartheidwith many laws very similar to those that had been applied to Jews in Germany during the 1930s ( v gr. movement control, work restrictions and mass confinements). Elon Musk was born in 1971, when South Africa was governed by John Vorster, who had been a member of the organization called OB, linked to the Nazi Party in Germany and which had burned Jewish businesses. Later, in 1986, Elon’s father, Errol Musk, acquired three emerald mines in Zambia and, he later stated, made so much money at the time that “he couldn’t even close his safe.”
On the other hand, on May 21, Donald Trump received President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, who attended accompanied by two great South African golfers, David Frost and Gary James. At first, the host praised the prestigious golfers, but the meeting turned out to be an ambush. Donald Trump accused South Africa of taking land from white farmers and said many white people are fleeing the country. The magnate failed to take into account one of the darkest inheritances of the apartheidat whose peak 10 percent of the population owned 85 percent of the fertile land. Trump’s real reason for boycotting the summit was to apply a “punishment” to South Africa for having sued Israel before the International Court of Justice for the crime of genocide. Javier Milei, president of Argentina, announced his non-attendance at the summit.
Despite everything, on November 22 and 23 the summit took place. Unfortunately, for various reasons, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Claudia Sheinbaum, Prince Mohamed Bin Salman and Prabowo Subianto, Prime Minister of Indonesia, were absent from the meeting. But at least they sent representatives and, in most cases, signed the final declaration. The summit achieved important victories. Cyril Ramaphosa created a joint G-20, IMF and World Bank committee to negotiate significant debt relief for several countries; Among the beneficiaries are Ethiopia, Ghana, Zambia, Sri Lanka and Suriname. The meeting also achieved the incorporation of the African Union as a permanent member of the G-20. However, a negative aspect was that South Africa promoted a regional development model based on an antithesis, “sustainable mining”, which was a kind of auction of its mines and the workforce of African miners. Perhaps that is why one of the most smiling participants in the conclave was Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada. The digital revolution and the transition to new energies have generated a growing demand for critical minerals ( v gr. lithium, nickel and graphite), essential for vehicles with electric batteries, as well as rare earths ( v gr. europium, gadolinium and terbium) essential in wind turbine magnets.
On the evening of November 21, when most of the European statesmen were already in Johannesburg, Daniel Patrick Driscoll, Secretary of the United States Department of Defense, informed the NATO ambassadors that it was time to sign peace in Ukraine. The Trump-Putin-without-Ukraine-nor-Europe peace plan angered those excluded, who questioned the imposition of limitations on the Ukrainian army and the cession of territories beyond the current limits between combatants. The next G-20 summit will be chaired by Trump, in Miami, Florida. He will surely try to impose a new world architecture based on neocolonialism, racism and anti-communism. Fortunately, everything seems to indicate that it will be a summit besieged by a sea of peaceful social expressions of resistance to the supremacist project.
