Hardly days after the completion of the first ever G20 Leaders’ Summit to be held on the African soil in Johannesburg, US President has announced that South Africa will not be allowed to attend the next session of G20 to be held in Miami, Florida, in 2026.
The Trump administration boycotted the Johannesburg-held G20 summit, citing concerns over the alleged persecution of the white minority Afrikaner community. The SA government has been at pains trying to explain that there is no such targeted victimization of the Afrikaner community. However, the Trump administration appears to be unconvinced.
After the immediate completion of the G20 Summit, South Africa refused to hand over the Presidency to a US embassy staff member who had attended the closing ceremony. Pretoria did not take kind to handing over the baton to a junior US official, and instead handed over the G20 Presidency days later at a low-key ceremony held the HQ of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. The US government officially holds the current 2026 Presidency of the G20, and will play host to the leaders’ summit at the end of 2026.
Washington has been incensed by the actions of South Africa, and predictably, has responded harshly. Effective immediately, Trump announced, the US will stop all payments and subsidies due to Pretoria.
Writing in his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump said: “The United States did not attend the G20 in South Africa, because the South African government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific Human Right Abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers. To put it more bluntly,” the US President continued, “they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them.”
He accused media outlets such as the “soon to be out of business New York Times and the Fake News Media” if deliberately failing to “issue a word against this genocide”.
Trump further wrote: “At the conclusion of theG20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our US Embassy, who attended the Closing Ceremony. Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year.”
Trump added that “South Africa has demonstrated to the world they are not a country worthy of membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”
