The summits are not endpoints. They are the mechanism by which two countries, which can neither resolve their differences nor afford to rupture them, manage the interval between crises.
Rasool’s expulsion deepened an already deteriorating relationship between the two countries, one that had been on a downward spiral since Trump returned to office.
Trump, grandson of a German immigrant, is particularly peeved at an independent South Africa, which was the worst example of a Western supremacist-cum-colonial mindset.