South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, closed the G20 summit in Johannesburg by banging a gavel, having rejected a US proposal for him to hand over to a relatively junior embassy official for the next summit in Florida in a year’s time. South Africa presented the two-day event as a triumph for multilateralism but it was marred by a boycott by the US, which has repeatedly accused South Africa of discriminating against white-minority Afrikaners, a claim that has been widely discredited. South Africa had offered to arrange for an equivalent “junior” diplomat to formally hand the G20 presidency to the US at the foreign ministry. South Africa’s foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, told reporters: “From us, the ball has moved. Putin is wanted by the international criminal court, to which South Africa is a signatory.
