MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Unity of purpose at the G20 Leaders’ Summit made bully Donald Trump small indeed

Last Friday, just a day before the commencement of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, humiliated a reporter aboard Air Force One.

Air Force One is the official air-traffic-control-designated call sign for any United States Air Force aircraft carrying the president. The term is commonly used to refer to specially modified US Air Force aircraft used to transport the president.

Trump and his entourage were on the aircraft en route to Palm Beach, Florida, with journalists onboard. Reporters were asking him questions, most of them centred on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, to which he was giving unsatisfactory responses.

A White House reporter from Bloomberg asked what the convicted child molester, who died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on new federal sex-trafficking charges, meant in one of his emails when he said Trump “knew about the girls”.

The president attempted to deflect, claiming he knew nothing about it and that he and Epstein had had a bad relationship.

He then called on a different reporter for the next question, but the Bloomberg reporter continued speaking, asking a follow-up question about whether there was anything incriminating in the files that Congress had recently voted to release. Trump, in his usual bullyish manner, scolded her, leaning in with a pointed finger and shouting: “Quiet! Quiet, piggy!”

The term “piggy” or “pig” is commonly associated as a slur for corrupt and racist police officers in the United States, used to express disdain. By directing it at a journalist, Trump was not only intending to demean, degrade and insult the reporter, but was continuing a pattern of attacks on the press that has defined both his first and current term in office.

As often happens when Trump hurls abuse at reporters, those who were on the aircraft with him, who watched their colleague being subjected to dehumanising treatment, said and did nothing. She stood alone in her humiliation, verbally abused by “the most powerful man in the world”.

A day later, at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, global leaders gathered for the G20 Leaders’ Summit under a cloud of threats and intimidation by Trump.

Despite boycotting the Summit, where South Africa was to hand over the G20 presidency to the United States, he demanded that a leaders’ declaration not be adopted because, without the United States, there could be no consensus.

But G20 leaders disregardedTrump’s threats, and consensus was reached on the very first day of the Summit, leading to the adoption of the declaration.

This defiance of Trump followed the South African government’s decision to decline the United States’ last-minute request for accreditation of its Embassy delegation for the handover ceremony.

Pretoria also refused to hand over the G20 Presidency to the Embassy chargé d’affaires, who was meant to lead the delegation, arguing that it would be a breach of protocol.

The president’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, stated unequivocally: “You cannot have a head of state handing over the presidency and the leadership of such an important, premier forum for macro-economic issues and other related issues to a junior embassy official.”

Indeed, there is no precedent for this. The fact that Trump attempted to do so during our G20 Leaders’ Summit, the first ever held on African soil, demonstrates his contempt not only for the continent and its leaders but specifically for South Africa, which he has consistentlytargeted with bullying.

For months, global leaders have capitulated to Trump’s unreasonable demands, fearful of retaliation. He has used tariffs and sanctions to bulldoze many countries, including his own allies.

Just a few days ago, he single-handedly developed a 28-point draft plan to end the Russo-Ukrainian War, sidelining the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom and even Ukraine.

The plan, as leaked to the media, includes highly contentious concessions for Ukraine, including ceding territory - such as the eastern Donbas region - to Russia, reducing the size of its army, and committing not to seek membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a defensive alliance of 32 countries.

That the Trump administration drafted such a plan without the input of the EU or NATO members (the draft was put together by Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his Russian counterpart, Kirill Dmitriev) is evidence of his disregard for multilateralism.

He has little interest in cooperation and believes the United States is the world’s unquestioned authority. And the reality is that nations around the world, by continuously bowing to his unreasonable demands, have emboldened him.

But the buck stopped in Johannesburg, where South Africa decided that the whims of an individual would no longer determine the fate of the world.

With the adoption of the G20 declaration, global leaders, led by Ramaphosa, finally stood up to Trump, demonstrating that unity of purpose can rescue multilateralism from the clutches of bullying and intimidation. When Ramaphosa asked: “Do I have consensus?”, it was about much more than the declaration itself.

It was a reminder to the G20, which represents more than 80 percent of global population, economy and trade, that powerdoes not, and should not, rest in the hands of one individual or one country, even if that country is the United States. It was a protest against months of abuse and humiliation.

The declaration itself contains commitments to issues the Trump administration opposes, including environmental protection. The United States formally exited the Paris Agreement in November 2020, one day after the presidential election.

Upon taking office, former president Joe Biden rejoined the Agreement via executive action, with re-entry taking effect 30 days later.

However, on the first day of his second term earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the climate pact a second time.

The process is expected to be complete in January 2026. Thus, for climate change to feature so prominently in the G20 Leaders’ Summit declaration is a clear message to Trump that the rest of the world could and would choose a different path, with or without the United States.

Whatever happens next, the message sent by global leaders at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg was unambiguous: the future of multilateralism depends on unity of purpose. This is the only way the world can stop a raging bull in its destructive tracks.

That South Africa, a developing nation on a continent with limited geopolitical power, became the stage for such a profound message is deeply significant.

We punched above our weight, confronting a powerful nation and its bully of a leader with the world behind us.

The reporters inside Air Force One did nothing when their colleague was abused by Trump. One can only imagine how powerful a message they could have sent had they stood in genuine solidarity, refusing to allow a bully to subject her to such dehumanising treatment.

Ultimately, if Trump learned nothing from South Africa’s refusal to drop the genocide case against apartheid Israel, his biggest ally, despite the unimaginable bullying and humiliation he subjected our president to in the White House, he certainly learned something from the G20 Leaders’ Summit adopting a declaration he insisted should never see the light of day. Here, on South African soil, an egomaniac was made small indeed.

Malaika is a geographer and researcher at the University of South Africa. She attended the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg where she was an in-house political commentator for EWN and provided analysis for various local and international networks including Al Jazeera, Yle (the Finnish public broadcaster) and Newzroom Afrika.