PALI LEHOHLA | The vexation of the West: Trump’s G20 petulance heralds the beginning of the end

The G20 has ended and the would-be recipient, the president of the US, has snubbed the function. South Africa is facing a dilemma of deciding who should receive the gavel. But a bigger question is whether this is the end of the G20 because the 2026 host walked away from this one and may decide on who should and should not attend, scuppering the entire effort.

Prof Jeffrey Sachs has a more profound and important interpretation: the end of US hegemony has been long coming. The seeds of the end germinated and dramatically appeared in South Africa with the characteristic Trump tantrum.

To understand this long-coming history, the book by veteran ambassador Vusi Mavimbela is revealing. The Africa in Brazil ― Odyssey Across the Atlantic provides a deeper meaning of the whitening dilemma that the slavery, colonial and the neo-colonial project by the imperialists face today and what Africa and Brazil should do.

While Trump represents a more vulgar, in your face manifestation of this socio-economic expression of domination, Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso forced Macron to deliver its shameless retaliatory but fading dimension, reminding us that the empire despite the Nato crisis will continue to view Africa as a hunting ground where whitening should be preserved.

South Africa as a host continues to be the epicentre of the whitening project based on the evidence of extremities between white and black, thus displaying the success in whitening.

The evidence from StatsSA illustrates the point that Mavimbela’s brilliant research reveals. In Mavimbela’s book is a Traoré-Sahel thesis of the solution to this whitening problem. Thus the absence of Traoré at the G20 suggests to us the distance we have to traverse since the first UN Declaration of the Development Decade in 1960.

Three vintages of decadal development were declared, and by the fourth the decadal transformed to a 15-year period and were renamed after extending this agenda to the Millennium Development Goals that transformed into the Sustainable Development Goals ― Agenda 2030.

Africa has its Agenda 2063 and its Seven Aspirations:

1. A prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development;
2. An integrated continent, politically united and based on the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance;
3. An Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law;
4. A peaceful and secure Africa;
5. An Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, shared values and ethics;
6. An Africa whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of African people, especially its women and youth, and caring for children;
7. Africa as a strong, united, resilient and influential global player and partner.

In all these attempts Africa bears the burden of underdevelopment because of the whitening agenda. That the G20 is hosted by South Africa, which became the epicentre and most successful project of whitening, is not only ironic but awakening. It is awakening when seen against the mirror of the Sahel and Traoré, who has declared war against whitening, and Macron’s protestations have been met with equal if not better force.

Trump’s tantrum makes him a useful idiot. It tears the rickety Nato asunder on their Ukraine stance. The expansion of Nato instigated by the US after they pulled the wool over Mikhail Gorbachev’s eyes, have promised not to move one inch east, is faltering. Ukraine is paying the price that proves deal-making Trump cannot be a trusted partner in Nato. So whether Trump is present or absent, the presence of Macron, and his disbelief that Traoré and the Sahel can dutifully say no to the exploitation of Africa, represent the same view.

Mavimbela’s book on whitening posits two dimensions of it that deliver the same intention though the routes are different. In Brazil, the elite tried to “whiten” the population biologically and culturally to erase the African footprint. They created a myth of “racial democracy” to mask this.

In South Africa, on the other hand, Mavimbela argues that white colonisers “came and stayed”, creating “colonialism of a special type”. Instead of trying to breed out the black population, they enforced rigid separation (Apartheid) to maintain economic dominance.

Crucially, what is playing out can be understood in the script by Mavimbela to argue that both systems achieved the same result in Brazil and South Africa despite their differing geographic spaces: the preservation of white economic power and land ownership.

The text notes that even today, “in South Africa, as is also the case in Brazil, inequality is correlated to a very large extent with race”.

So the absence of Trump and the presence of Macron is the same difference. This context is revealed in Trump’s G20 absence, the Traoré explicit stance against colonialism and the Macron presence in a future-seeking G20.

Trump’s refusal to attend the G20 in Johannesburg, explicitly citing the “persecution of white Afrikaner farmers” and calling the summit a “disgrace”, is the ultimate geopolitical manifestation of the whitening ideology.

Mavimbela in his book argues that South Africa represents “colonialism of a special type”, where the coloniser “came and stayed”.

By boycotting the first G20 on African soil to defend a white minority (who, as the text notes, still own the majority of the land), Trump is enforcing a global “whitening” solidarity. He is signalling that the Global North’s relationship with South Africa is still contingent on the comfort and safety of the colonial descendant, rather than the sovereignty of the black majority.

This confirms Mavimbela’s book when he asserts that the West views African sovereignty as conditional. Trump represents the “slap in the face” racism, described by Robert Stam as an overt rejection of black governance in favour of white colonial kinship.

While Trump represents the “slap”, Mavimbela would argue that Macron’s role was the “suffocating, paternalistic embrace” at the G20. This is because Macron’s role at the G20 livens up the “vexed” relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. The fracture in Françafrique is a critique of the “liberal” West that claims to support democracy while maintaining economic strangleholds. Macron represents the neocolonial status quo — willing to sit at the table (“the embrace”) but furiously hostile towards leaders like Traoré, who threaten French extraction.

Traoré at the table would be presenting the “counter-postulation”. Mavimbela’s illustrious book would postulate that Traoré’s conflict with Macron (accusing him of “insulting all Africans”) parallels the resistance of the Quilombos. Just as the Quilombos (maroon communities) withdrew from the slave system to create autonomous zones, Traoré’s rejection of French military pacts is a withdrawal from the “colonial pact”. What arises from this tension is Macron’s “vexation” at Traoré exposing the lie of the “partnership”.

Mavimbela notes that true liberation requires breaking the psychological and economic chains; Traoré’s defiance — and the West’s subsequent attempt to isolate him — is the modern struggle against the “paternalistic embrace”.

A G20 programme must understand that true liberation will not come from the G20 stage. It will come from the counter-postulation that argues for the alliance between the radical African leadership (Traoré’s stance) and the African diaspora (Brazil/Lula’s stance) to build a new power bloc that does not need Trump’s approval or Macron’s or any colonial system or power’s permission to exist.

• Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.