President Donald Trump meets with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. On Wednesday, Trump disinvited South Africa from attending the G20 Summit planned for Miami, Fla. Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump has withdrawn South Africa’s invitation to next year’s G20 summit in Miami, Fla., escalating a row with Johannesburg.
Trump made the announcement Wednesday on his Truth Social platform as this year’s summit of the wealthy nations, held in South Africa, came to an end without the United States participating.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,” the American leader said in the statement.
Trump has escalated his criticisms against South Africa since returning to the White House.
In February, he threatened to cut U.S. funding to the African nation over a new law allowing authorities to expropriate land in the public interest as part of efforts to redress racial inequalities rooted in apartheid.
Though the law states that property cannot be expropriated arbitrarily and allows expropriation without compensation only in limited cases, Trump accused South Africa of “confiscating land” in violation of the human rights of White South Africans.
Trump has since escalated his rhetoric, alleging that White South Africans face genocide — a claim rejected by South African officials and regional leaders and not supported by available evidence.
After Trump announced that the United States wouldn’t be attending the G20 summit in Johannesburg due to “Afrikaners … being killed and slaughtered and their land and farms … being illegally confiscated,” the African National Congress described Trump’s allegations as “part of a long and disgraceful pattern of imperial arrogance and disinformation.”
“These statements are not borne of ignorance, they are deliberate attempts to distort the reality of South Africa’s democracy and to mobilize racial fear for political gain in the United States,” the African National Congress, the ruling political party of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, said Nov. 8 in a statement.
“Donald Trump’s continued siding with racist and right-wing movements across the world is well-documented and consistent with his dangerous rhetoric. From defending White supremacists at Charlottesville to vilifying African nations as ‘expletive countries,’ his record speaks of a man driven by prejudice, not principle.”
Trump on Tuesday reiterated his allegations that Afrikaners were being killed and their land being stolen from them, while stating that at the conclusion of the G20 summit in Johannesburg, the South African delegation “refused” to hand over the G20 presidency to a senior U.S. Embassy official who attended the closing ceremony.
In response, the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that since the United States did not participate in the summit, it handed over the instruments of the G20 presidency to a U.S. Embassy official at South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.
The office added that it will continue to participate as a full, active and founding member of the G20.
“It is regrettable that despite the efforts and numerous attempts by President Ramaphosa and his administration to reset the diplomatic relationship with the U.S., President Trump continues to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country,” his office said in a statement.
