U.S. President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will not attend this year’s G20 summit in South Africa, citing unsubstantiated claims that white South Africans are being persecuted.
The summit, set to take place in Johannesburg later this month, will bring together leaders of the world’s largest economies. Trump called it a “total disgrace” that South Africa is hosting the event, accusing the country of allowing violence against Afrikaners and the illegal seizure of their farms.
“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No U.S. government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue.”
South Africa’s foreign ministry dismissed Trump’s comments, calling the decision “regrettable” and describing his claims as baseless. “The South African government wishes to state, for the record, that the characterisation of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical. Furthermore, the claim that this community faces persecution is not substantiated by fact,” the ministry said in a statement.
Trump had earlier suggested sending Vice President JD Vance in his place but has since declared that no U.S. representative will attend.
None of South Africa’s political parties, including those representing white or Afrikaner communities, have made any claims of a genocide or systematic persecution in the country.
Each year, a different member state hosts the G20 summit and sets its agenda. South Africa is this year’s host, with the U.S. scheduled to take its turn the following year.