I wasn’t surprised when US President Donald Trump declared that South Africa “should not be” in the G20, then announced on Truth Social on November 7 that no US government officials would attend this year’s summit in Johannesburg because of the so-called “genocide” of the country’s white farmers. His rant was not an exception, but the latest expression of a long Western tradition of disciplining African sovereignty. President Trump’s attack on South Africa fits into the pattern of Western leaders who have long tried to shut down African government institutions through misdirections such as branding Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba a “Soviet puppet” and calling anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela a “terrorist.”
The Trump administration is stepping up efforts to isolate Pretoria as Africa seeks a stronger voice in global governance. From the expansion of BRICS to climate finance negotiations, South Africa’s increasing diplomatic assertiveness challenges the conservative assumption that global leadership resides exclusively in the West.
On February 7, President Trump signed an executive order halting U.S. aid to South Africa. He argued that the government’s land acquisition policy discriminated against white farmers and amounted to expropriation without compensation. Nothing could be further from the truth. South African law allows expropriation only through due process and compensation, with limited constitutional exceptions. Mr. Trump’s claims ignore this legal reality and reveal a deliberate preference for distortion over fact.
Shortly thereafter, the regime expanded its refugee admissions policy to privilege Afrikaners, again citing distrust of government persecution. What is clear is that Washington is deliberately escalating tensions with Pretoria and is looking for an excuse to antagonize South Africa. This selective sympathy, applied exclusively to white South Africans, exposes the racialized hierarchies of concerns that have long shaped conservative engagement with the continent.
However, South African authorities have steadfastly rejected these claims for months, pointing to judicial rulings, official statistics, and constitutional safeguards that show no evidence of systematic persecution, let alone a “genocide” of white farmers. Indeed, as independent experts have repeatedly confirmed, there is no credible evidence whatsoever to support claims that South African white farmers are being systematically targeted as part of a genocidal campaign. Their rebuttals highlight a fundamental imbalance. Pretoria operates on verifiable data and institutional processes, while Washington relies on hyperbole and ideological grievances.
At the same time, as host of this year’s G20 summit, Pretoria is using this platform to advocate for a more cooperative and fair world order. For South Africa, assuming the G20 Presidency is not only symbolic but also strategic, an attempt to expand the influence of countries that have long been excluded from shaping the rules of global governance.
President Trump’s G20 boycott embodies a transnational movement based on Christian justice. Rather than recognizing South Africa as a sovereign partner with legitimate aspirations, President Trump’s rhetoric reduces South Africa to the moral backdrop of US authority. The boycott also reflects a broader effort to discredit multilateral institutions that dilute American exceptionalism.
This position is rooted in a long tradition of evangelical imperialism, which conflates theology and empire and positions Western domination as divinely sanctioned. The belief that Africa needed Western moral salvation emerged in the 19th century, when European missionaries declared it was the duty of Christianity to civilize and save the continent. Although the articulation has changed, the logic persists, reframing African political institutions as civilizational errors rather than legitimate expressions of sovereignty. This moralized paternalism did not disappear with decolonization. It simply adapted and resurfaced each time African countries asserted themselves on the world stage.
American evangelicals and conservative Christian networks have significant influence within the Republican Party. Their political and media ecosystem, featuring Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), routinely frames multilateral institutions, world aid, and international law as subordinate to American sovereignty and Christian civilization. These networks shape not just rhetoric but policy, turning fringe narratives into foreign policy priorities.
They also amplify unproven claims that Christians are being persecuted abroad, particularly in countries such as Nigeria and Ethiopia, to justify U.S. political and military intervention. President Trump’s obsession with South Africa follows the same scenario. In other words, it’s a manufactured crisis designed to excite, excite, and reassure conservative Christian constituencies. South Africa will be another setting for this performance.
In this distorted narrative, South Africa is not a constitutional democracy acting through strong, independent courts and institutions. Instead, Africa’s most developed country is stripped of its status and portrayed as a flawed civilization in need of Western fixes. For conservative Christian nationalists, African decision-making is not an autonomous institution, but a monitored privilege granted only when African decision-making aligns with Western priorities.
By labeling South Africa as an illegitimate country in the G20, raising false claims of genocide and land grabs, and punishing Pretoria’s ICJ case with aid cuts, President Trump asserts that only the West can define global legitimacy and moral authority, a worldview rooted in the authority of Christian nationalism. President Trump’s campaign is about punishment, not principle, and seeks to suppress African autonomy itself.
Many times I have walked the streets of Alexandra, a Johannesburg city shaped by apartheid’s spatial design, where inequality remains brutally clear. Alexandra squeezes more than 1 million residents into just 800 hectares (approximately 2,000 acres). Most of the informal settlements are located on the Jukskei River floodplain, with settlements clustered around narrow passageways and weak infrastructure. Here, the effects of structural inequalities are undeniable, but they completely disappear in the crisis that Trump has constructed.
These communities are located just a few kilometers from Sandton, a spacious, leafy and affluent suburb with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. The vast and entrenched gulf between these adjacent lands is essentially a living symbol of the deep inequalities built on selective moral outrage and racialized indifference that President Trump is willing to ignore and legitimize as a global standard.
For Alexandra, the struggle for dignity, equality, and inclusion is not a religious American fantasy but a practical search for the rights that apartheid and widespread global injustice sought to deny. Their struggle reflects a broader global fight against structures that concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. They also deserve better recognition.
This is the human condition that Trump’s pseudo-morality refuses to acknowledge. This is why South Africa’s global leadership is important.
Earlier this year, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa commissioned the landmark G20 Global Inequality Report, chaired by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. It found that since 2000, the world’s richest 1 percent have acquired more than 40 percent of new wealth, and that more than 80 percent of humanity now lives in conditions the World Bank classifies as high inequality.
The Johannesburg G20 summit aims to reform multilateral development banks such as the World Bank to confront a global financial system that sidelines developing countries and perpetuates economic inequality. While South Africa is turning to recognized multilateral tools such as the ICJ and G20 reforms, the United States is moving in the opposite direction.
Under the Trump administration, the U.S. government has sanctioned the International Criminal Court, abandoned key U.N. bodies, and rejected scrutiny by U.N. human rights experts, reflecting a doctrine of Christian nationalism that treats U.S. power as essentially absolute and accountable to no one.
South Africa offers an alternative vision rooted in global cooperation, shared responsibility, equality, and adherence to international law that unsettles those invested in unilateral power. The United States reframes decolonization as a sin, African equality as a mess, and American domination as divinely ordained. President Trump’s attacks reveal how deeply this worldview continues to shape American foreign policy.
But the world has moved beyond colonial dualism. African self-determination can no longer be framed as immoral. Human rights are universal and dignity belongs to all of us.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
