US President Donald Trump has said he will not invite South Africa to attend the G-20 summit in Miami next year and said he plans to “stop all payments and subsidies” to the country as relations between Washington and Pretoria continue to deteriorate.
In a social media post, Trump repeated claims that South Africa is committing genocide against white Africans and is taking land without compensation, and criticized the country’s handling of a recent global summit.
“South Africa will NOT be invited to the 2026 G20 which will be held next year in Greater Miami, Florida,” Trump said. “South Africa has shown the world that it is not a country worthy of membership anywhere and we will stop all payments and subsidies to them with immediate effect.”
The US boycotted the G-20 meeting in South Africa at the weekend, sending a diplomatic note warning Pretoria against accepting the leaders’ statement. South Africa went ahead and approved the document shortly after the meeting began.
Trump’s battle with South Africa reached a boiling point in May when he attacked South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House with a video to support his claim that white farmers were being targeted.
The incident derailed Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington, which was intended to mend relations with the US and persuade Trump to stop spreading a conspiracy theory about a campaign against white South Africans.
The South Africans also rejected a US request for Marc Dillard, chargé d’affaires in South Africa, to attend the leaders’ summit and receive a G-20 handover ceremony, saying Ramaphosa would not deal with a junior official. Instead, the handover took place quietly among diplomats at South Africa’s foreign ministry in Pretoria on Tuesday.
South Africa has been bracing for Trump to block it from attending the Miami summit, and officials there remain concerned that the US may try to cut the country out of the group altogether. Any change in membership would require consensus among the G-20 countries, as was the case before the 2023 summit in India, when the African Union was admitted as a full member.
It is unclear what Trump’s threat to cut off payments to South Africa will entail. Trump already suspended aid to the country by executive order in March.
With the help of S’thembile Cele.
This article was generated from an automated news agency source without text modification.
