President Trump called South Africa’s hosting of the G20 a “disgrace” and repeated debunked claims of “genocide” against white farmers.
President Donald Trump has said that U.S. officials will not attend this year’s Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Africa because of the country’s treatment of white farmers.
“It is an utter disgrace that the G20 is being held in South Africa,” President Trump said on his platform Truth Social on Friday.
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“Africans (descendants of Dutch settlers, French and German immigrants) are being killed, massacred and their lands and farms illegally confiscated,” Trump wrote, repeating claims rejected by South African authorities.
“As long as these human rights violations continue, U.S. government officials will not attend. We look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!” he added.
Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has repeatedly claimed that white South Africans are being persecuted in the black-majority country, a claim rejected by South African government and Afrikaner officials.
President Trump had already said on Wednesday that he would not attend a summit in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23, bringing together leaders of the world’s major economies and emerging economies, and had called for South Africa to be removed from the G20.
U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance was scheduled to attend the meeting in place of the president. However, a person familiar with Vance’s plans told The Associated Press that Vance will no longer be going to South Africa.
Tensions between the United States and South Africa first arose in January after President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced new laws to address disparities in land ownership that have left three-quarters of private land in the hands of the white minority, more than three decades after the end of apartheid.
The new law makes it easier for the state to expropriate land, which Ramaphosa maintains does not amount to expropriation, but creates a framework for fair redistribution by allowing authorities to expropriate land without compensation in exceptional circumstances, such as when a site is abandoned.
Immediately after the introduction of the eminent domain law, President Trump accused South Africa of “confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly.”
“The United States will not support this. We will act.”
In May, President Trump granted asylum to 59 white South Africans as part of a resettlement program that the U.S. government described as providing sanctuary after racial discrimination.
That same month, President Trump ambushed President Ramaphosa during a meeting at the White House, claiming that a “genocide” was occurring against white Africans in his country.
Ramaphosa denied the allegations and told President Trump, pointing to the three white South African men in the room, professional golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goossen, and South Africa’s richest man, Johann Rupert, “If there was a massacre of Afrikaner farmers, I’ll bet you these three gentlemen wouldn’t be here.”
Saul Dubow, a South African historian and professor of Commonwealth history at the University of Cambridge, previously told Al Jazeera that there was no merit to “Trump’s fanciful claims about white genocide”.
Dubow suggested that President Trump may be even more angry about the genocide lawsuit South Africa filed against Israel at the International Court of Justice over the Gaza war.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration continues to claim widespread persecution. On October 30, the White House said it expected to cut annual admissions to just 7,500 people, and that most new refugees admitted to the United States would be white South Africans.
“Admission numbers are primarily allocated under Executive Order 14204 to Afrikaners of South African origin and victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” the White House said.
