President Donald Trump has said no United States (US) official will attend this year’s Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Africa (SA), citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.
Writing on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said it was a “total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa”.
“Afrikaners (people who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” Trump wrote, reiterating claims that have been rejected by the authorities in SA.
“No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!” he added.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly claimed that white South Africans are being persecuted in the black-majority country, a claim rejected by South Africa’s government and top Afrikaner officials.
Trump had already said on Wednesday that he would not attend the summit – which will see the heads of states from the world’s leading and emerging economies gather in Johannesburg on 22 and 23 November – as he also called for SA to be thrown out of the G20.
US vice president JD Vance had been expected to attend the meeting in place of the president. But a person familiar with Vance’s plans told The Associated Press news agency that he will no longer travel to SA.
Tensions first arose between the US and SA after president Cyril Ramaphosa introduced a new law in January seeking to address land ownership disparities, which have left three-quarters of privately owned land in the hands of the white minority more than three decades after the end of apartheid.
The new legislation makes it easier for the state to expropriate land, which Ramaphosa insists does not amount to confiscation, but creates a framework for fair redistribution by allowing authorities to take land without compensation in exceptional circumstances, such as when a site has been abandoned.
Shortly after the introduction of the Expropriation Act, Trump accused SA of “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY”.
“The United States won’t stand for it, we will act,” he said.
In May, Trump granted asylum to 59 white South Africans as part of a resettlement programme that Washington described as giving sanctuary after racial discrimination.
The same month, when Trump met with Ramaphosa in the White House, he ambushed him with the claim that a “genocide” is taking place against white Afrikaners in his country.
Ramaphosa denied the allegations, telling Trump “if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here”, pointing to three white South African men present – professional golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and South Africa’s richest man, Johann Rupert.
South African historian Saul Dubow, professor of Commonwealth history at the University of Cambridge, previously told Al Jazeera that there is no merit to “Trump’s fantasy claims of white genocide”.
Dubow suggested that Trump may be more angry about South Africa’s genocide casefiled against Israel in the International Court of Justice over its war on Gaza.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration has maintained its claim of widespread persecution.
On 30 October, the White House indicated that most new refugees admitted to the US will be white South Africans, as it slashed the number of people it will admit annually to just 7 500.
“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from SA pursuant to Executive Order 14204 and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” the White House said. – Al Jazeera
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