Not invited to G20: What is Donald Trump's problem with South Africa?

US President Donald Trump’s rift with South Africa continues.

Trump has now disinvited South Africa from the 2026 G20 summit which is slated to be held in the United States. Trump made headlines last month when he announced that he would not be attending the G20 summit in South Africa.

But what happened exactly? What do we know about the disintegrating relationship between the two countries under Trump?

Trump disinvites RSA from G20

Trump, taking to his social media on Wednesday, said South Africa would ‘not’ be invited to the G20 in Miami next year.

“At my direction, South Africa will not be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the great city of Miami, Florida next year,” Trump wrote. “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 development comes after US officials boycotted this month’s G20 talks in South Africa’s Johannesburg. Trump also claimed that white farmers in South Africa are facing a ‘genocide’, an oft-debunked claim that he and his inner circle, including Elon Musk, have continued to repeat.

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“The United States did not attend the G20 in South Africa because the South African Government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific human rights abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers. To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them,” Trump wrote.

He also slammed the media for ignoring the allegations.

“Perhaps, worst of all, the soon-to-be-out-of-business New York Times and the Fake News Media won’t issue a word against this genocide. That’s why all the liars and pretenders of the radical left media are going out of business!” he said.

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There are also reports that the US will try to push South Africa out of the grouping and replace it with a Central European nation that is more closely aligned ideologically with the Trump administration. A source told CNN that the Trump administration would likely invite Poland to be part of the 2026 G20 in America.

Poland’s finance minister last month seemed to hint at this, saying, “Given that we have had thirty-five years of uninterrupted economic growth and are the twentieth-largest economy in the world, ahead of, among others, Switzerland, our aspirations to join the G20 are entirely justified.”

However, doing so would require the consensus of all the G20 nations. Experts say the most the Trump administration can likely do next year is deny visas to South African officials to attend the summit. South African officials told Bloomberg that they expect to be imminently told that they will be excluded from the G20 in America.

Trump’s rift with RSA deepens

The disinvitation adds another layer of tension to an already mired relationship between the two nations over Trump’s false claims.
This was the first time a G20 meeting was being held on the African continent. Trump refused to attend himself; he also forbade any senior US officials in February from going for the summit.

“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” Trump wrote on November 7. “No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue.”

Trump also added that Ramaphosa had refused to pass the G20 gavel at the end of the summit. The United States had volunteered to send an official to do so, which the Ramaphosa government turned down. “At the conclusion of the G20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a senior representative from our US Embassy, who attended the closing ceremony,” Trump wrote.

In May, even as America closed off the arrival of refugees from around the world, Trump continued to offer white South Africans refugee status. That same month Trump hosted Ramaphosa in the White House, where he tried to make the same accusations of genocide, particularly against white Afrikaners. Trump presented video clips and printed articles that he claimed had documented systematic killings and land seizures.

Many slammed Trump for ambushing Ramaphosa in what many saw as reminiscent of his disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  Ramaphosa during the meeting pushed back against Trump. “If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here,” Ramaphosa said, referring to golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen and billionaire Johann Rupert, all white, who were present in the room. After the meeting Ramaphosa was even more firm, telling reporters, “There is just no genocide in South Africa.”

In March, the US State Department expelled the South African ambassador to the US, labelling him ‘persona non grata’. Trump in February, just a month after returning to the White House, signed an executive action slamming South Africa for alleged human rights abuses against white Afrikaners. He said the US would halt all aid and assistance to the country.

South Africa has also angered the United States and its ally Israel by accusing Tel Aviv of conducting a genocide in Gaza.

This is undoubtedly a difficult situation for South Africa as the US is its second-biggest trading partner after China. Trade between the two countries was valued at around $26.2 billion (Rs. 2,342.49 billion) in 2024. The United States in 2023 gave South Africa assistance worth $441.3 million (Rs. 39.44 billion). That figure in 2024 stood at approximately $581 million (Rs. 51.93 billion).

Experts debunk Trump’s claims yet again

But what about Trump’s claims, you ask?

The country, which is overwhelmingly black, was under apartheid till the early 1990s. In 1994, the country became a democracy under anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela. There are currently around 2.7 million white Afrikaners, mostly descendants of Dutch and French settlers, in South Africa. The data show that while white farmers have been murdered in South Africa, they account for under 1 per cent of the 27,000 murders that occur every year in the country.

In the final quarter of 2024, just a dozen murders occurred on farms across the country. In the entire year, South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, with 44 linked to farming communities. Eight of those victims were farmers.

Meanwhile, the white minority continues to own a majority of the private land in South Africa. There have been just a handful of cases of courts returning land to black owners who were dispossessed by colonialism and apartheid, that too after lengthy legal trials. But that hasn’t stopped Trump, Musk and many others from repeating these categorically false claims.

Experts too have brushed aside any notions of a white genocide in South Africa.

Gareth Newham, who runs a justice and violence prevention programme at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, told PBS, “As an independent institute tracking violence and violent crime in South Africa, if there was any evidence of either a genocide or targeted violence taking place against any group based on their ethnicity, we would be amongst the first to raise the alarm and provide the evidence to the world.”
Newham added that the primary motive for most of the attacks is overwhelmingly robbery.

“Attacks where there may be evidence of racial or political motives (i.e. slogans written on the wall at a scene of a crime, or words spoken by the attacker according to the victim), are exceedingly rare and make up only a few per cent of the cases recorded,” Newham said.

Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Development in Africa, agreed with this assessment.
“There is no indication of a state-sponsored campaign or intent to eliminate a specific racial group,” Kaziboni said. “The primary motive remains robbery, sometimes coupled with extreme violence, consistent with broader patterns of violent crime in South Africa.”

South Africa responds

South Africa seems unmoved by Trump’s threats. President Cyril Ramaphosa called Trump’s comments ‘regrettable’.

“The summit produced a declaration that affirmed the indisputable strength and value of multilateralism in response to the most pressing challenges facing the world,” Ramaphosa wrote.

“South Africa will continue to participate as a full, active and constructive member of the G20. We call on members of the G20 to reaffirm its continued operation in the spirit of multilateralism, based on consensus, with all members participating on an equal footing in all of its structures. It is regrettable that despite the efforts and numerous attempts by President Ramaphosa and his administration to reset the diplomatic relationship with the US, President Trump continues to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country.”

Ramaphosa wrote that since the United States officials did not attend the summit, the gavel and other ‘instruments of the G20 Presidency’ were duly handed over to a US Embassy official at the headquarters of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.

Asked about the US’ absence from the G20 in South Africa, Ramaphosa replied, “Their absence is their loss.”

With inputs from agencies