The Department of International Relations and Cooperation announced on May 4, 2026 that South Africa would host a special meeting of the Southern African Development Community Foreign Ministers at Skukuza in the Kruger National Park from May 22 to 24, 2026.
Minister Ronald Lamola would chair the gathering as Chair of the SADC Council of Ministers. The retreat was agreed upon at the SADC Council of Ministers Meeting held in Pretoria in March 2026, where ministers resolved to reflect on the prevailing geopolitical environment and its impact on the region. South Africa faces one of its most serious diplomatic disputes with the United States in years after Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana was formally barred from attending a G20 finance summit in Washington.
The United States has crossed a diplomatic line by formally blocking South Africa’s Finance Minister from attending a G20 finance summit, an act of aggression that has left the region with no choice but to rally together against Washington’s bullying. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana confirmed the exclusion on April 13, 2026, while speaking to Bloomberg at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. He was traveling to the United States for the Spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank when he revealed that both he and South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago would not be attending the G20 finance chiefs gathering.
“We are members of the G20,” he said. “However, the USA has not accredited us, which means that South Africa will not be part of the G20 for the whole of this year.”
He described the situation as a holiday from the G20. This is not a holiday. It is a punishment, and Washington knows it.
In November 2025, President Donald Trump announced that South Africa would not be invited to the G20 summit he plans to host in Miami, making false claims that the country was committing genocide against white Afrikaans people and seizing land without compensation. Claims that crime statistics and police data in the country do not support.
Political analyst and Principal Consultant at Centre for Strategic Leadership Sandile Swana said: “These lies are a deliberate pretext.”
The United States formally took over the G20 presidency from South Africa in late 2025, and Washington used that power not to lead, but to retaliate. The US previously boycotted the G20 leaders summit held in Johannesburg in November 2025. Now Washington has gone further, using its administrative control over accreditation to silence South Africa’s voice entirely. South Africa’s top diplomat, Director General Zane Dangor of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, has called the exclusion a formal breach of the G20’s rules.
“The fact that we’re not part of the G20 is a breach of the rules of the G20 because we are not a guest country, we are a full member,” Dangor said. Swana added, “America has shown that it does not respect the rules based order it claims to defend.”
It is against this exact backdrop of American aggression that South Africa will host a special meeting of the Southern African Development Community, known as SADC. The timing is no accident. The instability is not natural but manufactured by Washington. Minister Lamola, who will also chair the upcoming retreat in his capacity as Chair of the SADC Council of Ministers, has previously warned of rising global instability. Speaking after the March meeting, he urged regional leaders to deepen integration, stating that regional success must deliver meaningful improvement in the lives of citizens. That improvement is now under direct threat from American trade policy.
Washington has not only isolated South Africa from G20 processes but has also created uncertainty around the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a vital trade agreement that benefits several SADC economies and is set to expire in December 2026. This is not diplomacy but coercion. The retreat gives SADC foreign ministers a chance to coordinate their positions and discuss how to protect their collective interests from American pressure. According to Sandile, “The ICC and ICJ cases that South Africa is leading against Israel present irreconcilable differences with the USA. That conflict is enhanced by the proximity of South Africa to Iran, Russia and China, which will not change in the next ten years.” The fact that South Africa is convening the meeting in its capacity as interim chair of SADC gives Pretoria an opportunity to build regional solidarity at a moment when it finds itself under attack by Washington. The message is clear: SADC will not bow.
The exclusion of South Africa has already prompted concern from neighbours who understand that today it is South Africa, but tomorrow it could be any of them. On April 8, 2026, Namibian opposition leader McHenry Venaani delivered a strong rebuke to his own government’s silence on the issue. Speaking in the Namibian parliament following President Netumbo Nandi Ndaitwah’s State of the Nation Address, Venaani questioned why Namibia and SADC were not defending their ally.
“As a former foreign affairs minister and a known and respected diplomat, our foreign policy is very mum and quiet when we see our neighbour South Africa being bullied by the United States of America,” Venaani said. He used the word bullied because that is exactly what this is. He further challenged the bloc, asking why the region was not speaking out on that issue. In response, President Nandi Ndaitwah defended her administration’s approach of quiet diplomacy, revealing that Namibia was included in high level discussions during the G20 Summit.
“We might not have maybe made noise, but we are in contact with the South Africans,” she said. But quiet diplomacy has not stopped Washington from attacking South Africa. Many in the region now believe it is time to speak up.
As the foreign ministers prepare to gather in the Kruger National Park, the agenda will focus on finding collective solutions to the trade uncertainty caused by US policy shifts. Discussions will also cover the ongoing instability in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the African Union position ahead of the Miami Summit in December 2026, the threat to AGOA renewal and other security challenges affecting the region. But the central issue is the broader regional response to American pressure and how to resist it. Swana noted: “Trump has threatened sanctions against specific ANC leaders.
“These sanctions will be difficult to work because the ANC is factionalised and also the ANC is fracturing and losing overall electoral support.”
While Minister Godongwana remains sidelined from global finance talks in Washington because the US refuses to let him in, the upcoming SADC retreat offers South Africa a platform to solidify regional unity against that same bully.
The meeting is a chance for the bloc to demonstrate that despite external pressures, SADC intends to coordinate its foreign policy independently and defend its members. The United States may control the G20 presidency, but it does not control Africa. For the region, the question is no longer whether quiet diplomacy will work, because it has not worked. The discussions at Skukuza later this month are expected to provide a clear answer, and that answer is expected to be a firm and united stand against American arrogance.
* Sethu Libalele is a contributor.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
