JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s president said on Thursday that the US had signaled it might change its mind and attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg following a boycott by the Trump administration, but the White House dismissed the report as “fake news”.
Cyril Ramaphosa spoke at a joint press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa.
“We received a notice from the United States, a notice that we are still discussing with them, about a change of heart, about attending the summit in one form or another,” he said.
“It comes in the days leading up to the summit. And that’s why we need to engage in these types of discussions to see how it’s practical and what it really means in the end.”
US President Donald Trump’s administration has announced it will not attend the first G20 summit in Africa, saying the host country, which was previously ruled by white minority apartheid until 1994, is discriminating against white people.
On Thursday, a White House official said the envoy would attend the ceremony to officially hand over the G20 presidency from South Africa to the US, but Washington was out of the question.
“This is fake news. The Chargé d’affaires in Pretoria will attend the handover ceremony as a formality, but the United States is not joining the G20 discussions,” they added.
But a spokesman for the South African president, Vincent Magwenya, said “the president will not hand over the chargé d’affaires”.
Trump rejected South Africa’s agenda for the Nov. 22-23 summit to promote solidarity and help developing countries adapt to disasters with worse weather, transition to clean energy and reduce their excessive debt costs.
On handing over the G20 presidency to the United States last week, Ramaphosa said: “I don’t want to hand over to an empty chair, but the empty chair will be there.”
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