SA Rejects US Offer To Attend G20 Ceremony as US accuses Ramaphosa of: “running his mouth”

The South African government has rejected Washington’s offer to send diplomat Marc Dillard to Sunday’s G20 handover ceremony, describing the gesture as inadequate and disrespectful given the significance of the event. Dillard heads the United States embassy in Pretoria and had been put forward by Washington after the White House confirmed that it would not attend the full G20 summit in Johannesburg.

The ceremony will see South Africa formally hand the G20 chairmanship to the United States. Pretoria has criticised Washington’s decision to boycott the main summit, calling it a new low in relations that have deteriorated sharply over the past year. South African officials said privately that the offer to send Dillard was viewed as an insult, arguing that the United States was attempting to downgrade the importance of the summit.

Relations tested their lowest depths yesterday after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Cyril Ramaphosa was, in her words: “running his mouth” in his criticism of the US [for South African readers unfamiliar with that phrase it is a deliberately insulting way to say that a person talks too much, especially about things they know nothing about]. Her comments were seen in Pretoria as a deliberate escalation.

The latest tit-for-tat follows months of rising tension in which Washington accused South Africa of threatening US national security interests and urged Pretoria to reconsider empowerment and expropriation policies that it says prejudice American investors. Pretoria has rejected those claims and has insisted that it will not allow the US to dictate the terms of its domestic policy or its diplomatic positions.

Private diplomatic efforts continue in an effort to restore a sound US/South Africa relationship but these continue to face intransigence on both sides of the Atlantic.