South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has described as “regrettable” US President Donald Trump's announcement that South Africa will not be invited to attend the G20 summit in Florida next year.
In a social media post, Trump said South Africa refused to hand over the G20 chairmanship to a US embassy representative at last week's summit in Johannesburg.
“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT receive an invitation to the 2026 G20 Summit to be held next year in the great city of Miami, Florida.”
Members of the G20, the grouping of the world's largest economies, do not need an invitation, but may be subject to visa restrictions.
Trump boycotted Johannesburg summit over the widely discredited claim that South Africa's white minority is the victim of large-scale killings and land grabs.
Ramaphosa said in a statement that the US was expected to attend G20 meetings, “but unfortunately it chose not to attend the G20 Leaders' Summit in Johannesburg of its own accord.” However, he noted that some American businesses and civil society organizations were present at the event.
He said that since the American delegation was not there, “the instruments of the G20 Presidency were duly handed over to a US Embassy official at the headquarters of the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation.”
The low-key broadcast appeared to further anger Trump, who has criticized the South African government's domestic and foreign policies.
He has said in the past that white genocide is taking place in South Africa, and on Wednesday he said the government was “killing white people and allowing their farms to be taken away at random.”
The South African government has consistently rejected such claims as widely discredited and lacking reliable evidence.
Ramaphosa said it was regrettable that despite efforts to reset relations with the US, Trump continued to “take punitive measures against South Africa based on disinformation and distortions about our country.”
In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said South Africa had “demonstrated to the world that it is not a country worthy of membership anywhere” and announced a halt to “all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”
South African officials called for solidarity and called on other G20 members to defend the integrity of the assembly and the rights of all its member states.
The G20 summit, held for the first time in Africa, ended with a joint declaration of commitment to “multilateral cooperation” to mitigate climate change and economic inequality.
The declaration came despite objections from the US, which accused South Africa of weaponizing its leadership of the group this year.
Additional reporting by Pumza Filani in Johannesburg
