Over the next two days, Johannesburg will play host to the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit, which US President Donald Trump has announced he will boycott, calling it a “total disgrace” over his unproven claims that a minority group in this country is being violently persecuted.

Writing on his Truth Social platform on November 7, he declared: “It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa … Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue.”

Of course, this does not reflect reality, with official statistics indicating that of the 225 victims of farm crimes reported from April 2020 to March 2024, 101 were mostly black current or former workers and 53 mostly white farmers. These figures – from the South African Police Service – cast doubt on allegations of a systemic Afrikaner genocide, a narrative that has long been dismissed by researchers at the Institute for Security Studies and others studying rural crime patterns.

Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, also snubbed the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in February, repeating the myth about expropriation of private property and citing what he described as “a very bad agenda” from South Africa. Specifically, he accused South Africa of hosting the G20 to promote themes of “solidarity, equality and sustainability”, which he equates with DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) and climate change.

What is rich about Rubio’s assertions is that these themes fully align with the G20’s official priorities, which are to reform global governance, support developing economies and accelerate climate resilience initiatives.

While we would have loved to have the US, the world’s largest economy, in attendance, it is important to recognise that the significance of a summit extends far beyond the presence or absence of one superpower. South Africa’s role as the summit’s host has the support of its G20 partners, the likes of Germany, whose Minister of State for Foreign Affairs remarked back in February: “With South Africa, an African country, assuming the G20 presidency for the first time . . . Germany supports the South African Presidency and its ambitious agenda – particularly at a time when wars and conflicts are causing great suffering and destruction in the world.”

This perspective underscores a broader truth: Africa is no longer merely a stage on which major powers perform, but a co-author of global decision-making. That shift is precisely what Trump seems unable – or unwilling – to grasp. His moral indignation, which, as already indicated, is grounded in contested claims, pales when weighed against the significance of skipping the Johannesburg summit.

European Commission Vice-President Kaja Kallas stressed the stakes in an interview with Bloomberg, also in February, which she gave on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Johannesburg: “As the G20, we must continue … countries that understand the value of international law want to stick together. So there is a lot of talk about keeping multilateralism alive.”

By staying away, Trump has forfeited influence on conversations about issues of global importance at a time when African leadership is asserting itself. In fact, his absence creates space for other actors to shape the narrative. The Pan-African Climate Alliance framed this pointedly: “The idea that African nations must adhere to Washington’s geopolitical preference as a precondition for engagement is a remnant of outdated power dynamics.”

Trump’s boycott is consistent with his apparent disdain for multilateral institutions. Behind the scenes, his team is plotting to shrink the G20 to a bare-bones financial forum, according to a Reuters report from July, which claimed that the US “aims to pare the Group of 20 major economies back to its financial roots next year, when it takes over the rotational presidency”.

Should Trump have his way, the G20’s agenda will narrow to two tracks – the Leaders’ Summit and a core Finance Ministers’ track – while axing working groups on climate, health, energy and trade. In short, Trump’s preferred G20 would focus on economic stability and investment, while largely ignoring broad development and climate goals. The world must resist that.