As South Africa hosts the G20 Leaders’ Summit this weekend, business leader and G20 Sherpa Prof Bonang Mohale says the world’s focus should extend far beyond the drama surrounding US President Donald Trump’s expected absence. Mohale, who served as South Africa’s G20 negotiator (“Sherpa”), argues that the summit represents a pivotal opportunity for South Africa to reassert itself economically and diplomatically. Mohale says Trump’s hostility towards South Africa must be understood within a bigger global context, rather than as a personal or bilateral dispute. “Trump 1.0 demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt that the president of the United States is against anything that is woke, progressive. He’s a racist, he’s against women, against Muslims, against people who prefer the same gender,” Mohale said. “If the facts don’t favour him, he manufactures his own. He’s a bully. He believes in the currency of tariffs: ‘I get my way or else’.”