Countries understood ‘that there's a bilateral issue between South Africa and the US, but that must not, in any shape or form, undermine or imperil the work of the G20’, (GCIS)
The successful adoption of the G20 declaration shows that member states were not swayed by the United States’ decision to stay out of this year’s summit over a disagreement on the agenda and policy differences with South Africa, that have strained relations, the presidency said on Saturday.
Throughout the negotiations, countries were clear that the declaration reflected a year’s worth of investment and could not be abandoned because of “a bilateral diplomatic spat with South Africa”, presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told a media briefing on the sidelines of the leaders’ summit, which kicked off on Saturday.
Breaking with custom, the leaders agreed to adopt the Johannesburg Declaration at the start of the summit, confirming that, despite weeks of tense negotiation and the absence of the US, Pretoria had secured consensus.
“Countries understood that there’s a bilateral issue between South Africa and the US, but that must not, in any shape or form, undermine or imperil the work of the G20,” Magwenya said.
“For the US to say countries must not support the declaration, what that actually meant is that all these countries will now abandon the investment they’ve made throughout the entire year.”
Ramaphosa was happy with the outcome, Magwenya said. “President Ramaphosa is quite pleased that we’ve seen support for the declaration right at the start of the summit.”
“It was going to be difficult for the US to put forward a convincing argument to member countries to abandon that responsibility just because it has a bilateral diplomatic issue with South Africa.”
Magwenya said there were no “sticking issues”, but extensive debate took place about how climate commitments should be reflected.
“There were long debates around how these issues were best reflected, so as to not to dilute the importance,” he said, emphasising that implementation by member states would be critical,” he said.
“It’s a big win, not only for G20 member states, but also for the world as a whole, particularly the Global South, as well as the African continent. When you get to look at the declaration, you will notice that Africa is mentioned close to 52 times. We’ve never had a declaration that gives such a level of prominence to the African continent.”
Issues including debt sustainability, inequality and climate justice received strong backing and expression in the declaration, he told journalists.
He said the logistics of the G20 presidency handover to the US would have to be managed by the department of international relations and cooperation “at an appropriate level of leadership with the US embassy whenever they get to do that”.
“That has become the least of our concerns. Our biggest preoccupation now is how do we sustain these issues going forward,” he said.
He said as part of the G20 troika — which consists of the current host country, the previous year’s presidency and the subsequent presidency — South Africa would engage “robustly and quite intensely” with the US and work to ensure priorities already set out “are not clouded or removed”.
He said governments, academic institutions, development agencies, and the private sector had already begun working on the G20 reports on inequality and debt sustainability.
“And so issues have, in a way, been future-proofed in the manner in which we’ve sought to mobilise all of society behind them,” Magwenya said.