South Africa has reacted to the announced exclusion from the next G20 summit by US President Donald Trump. The office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that Trump’s statement yesterday was regrettable.
The South African government rejected Trump’s statements that white farmers in South Africa were being murdered and their land taken away from them. Trump continues to take “punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country”.
Trump had announced that he would exclude South Africa from participating in the G20 summit, which is to be held next year at one of his private golf clubs in Florida. Trump also announced that all payments and subsidies for South Africa would be stopped.
He justified this with the way a representative of the US government was treated at this year’s G20 summit, which took place in Johannesburg last weekend. In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump said that South Africa had refused to hand over the G20 presidency to the representative of the US embassy at the end of the summit.
“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT receive an invitation to the 2026 G20 Summit,” Trump declared. “South Africa has shown the world that it is not a country worthy of membership anywhere.” Trump had referred to the alleged violence against white members of a minority.
South Africa has rejected this accusation as unfounded. The country experienced apartheid for decades, in which the black majority of the population was oppressed by a white minority. Even some of the so-called Afrikaners, whom Trump sees as victims, have attributed his statements to misinformation.
Trump is referring to South Afrikaners, who are descended from predominantly Dutch colonial settlers who arrived in South Africa from the 17th century onwards. The South African government described it as an insult that the USA decided to send a local representative from the embassy for the handover ceremony.
This took place after the summit at the South African Department of Foreign Affairs “as the United States was not present at the summit”, Ramaphosa’s office said. The USA has now taken over the rotating presidency of the G20. The G20 includes industrialized countries, emerging economies, the African Union and the EU.
