After a tense G20 Summit, US and South Africa agree on a low-key wooden gavel handover

Having broken with tradition of not handing over the wooden gavel to the next host of the G20 Leaders' Summit, the US, after South Africa's staging of the event closed on Sunday, that exercise is expected to happen at some point.

The Donald Trump-led administration of the US snubbed this years G20 Summit that played out in Johannesburg.

There was talk that at the eleventh-hour that the White House would deploy an official from its embassy in South Africa for the formal presidency handover process, but Ramaphosa dug in his heels and said that such move would be inappropriate.

According to Zane Dangor, the Sherpa of South Africa’s G20 presidency and Department of International Relations and Cooperation in South Africa's Director-General, both government's agreed to a low-key handover of the gavel, which was likely to happen on Tuesday.

“The agreement is that we should do it low-key. It’s not just a South African issue; the US also doesn’t want a very big handover event. So we will hand over at the level of a senior official from Dirco to the US chargé d’affaires,” said Dangor in a TV interview with Newzroom Afrika

The quiet exchange comes after days of diplomatic tension over the level of US representation, which had Ramaphosa and the White House administration trading verbal blows.

Over the weekend, IOL reported that Dirco Minister, Ronald Lamola, insisted that while the US was entitled to attend the summit, its representative needed to be of the appropriate seniority to receive the presidency gavel from President Cyril Ramaphosa.

South Africa had communicated that Washington could not send its embassy chargé d’affaires to stand in for President Donald Trump, or another senior envoy during the handover ceremony at the summit.

Clarifying the government’s stance, Lamola said the US was free to send “anyone”, provided the person held senior status.

“We did not deny anyone access. The United States is a member of the G20 and if they want to be represented, they can still send anyone at the right level. It is the leaders’ summit. The right level is the head of state, a special envoy appointed by the president of that country, or it could also be a minister,” Lamola said.

He added that while US embassy officials, including the chargé d’affaires, were welcome to participate in the summit proceedings, the chargé d’affaires could not receive the gavel from Ramaphosa.

“It’s up to them, but the issue of the handover — the president of the Republic of South Africa will not be handing over to the US chargé d’affaires. We will hand over to the US in the Dirco offices, or anywhere they may want within the borders of the Republic of South Africa,” he said.

On Saturday, Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya confirmed that no US representatives would attend the summit, describing Washington’s initial plan as “a breach of protocol”.

“You cannot have a head of state handing over the presidency and leadership of such an important forum for macro-economic and related issues being handed over to a junior embassy official,” Magwenya said.

A chargé d’affaires is typically the lowest-ranking head of mission, appointed when a country has no ambassador in place. They do not present credentials to the host head of state and are generally viewed as temporary or junior-level representatives.

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