Ramaphosa dismisses Trump’s threat to bar South Africa from 2026 G20 summit
South Africa’s president labels Donald Trump’s repeated claims about his country as ‘misinformation’
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa dismissed on Sunday US President Donald Trump’s threat to exclude Pretoria from next year’s Group of 20 summit, reaffirming South Africa’s status as a founding member of the group.
Washington boycotted the G20 meeting held under South Africa’s presidency in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23, with Trump repeating allegations, widely discredited, that the host country’s black-majority government persecutes its white minority.
Trump said last Wednesday that South Africa would not be invited to the summit to be held in Florida next year because it had refused to hand over the G20 presidency to a senior representative of its embassy who was at the closing ceremony. Pretoria says it handed over the rotating presidency to a US embassy official.
“South Africa is and will remain a full, active and constructive member of the G20,” Ramaphosa said in a State of the Nation Address on Sunday.
07:55
Trump ambushes South Africa’s Ramaphosa with false ‘white genocide’ claims
He also described as “blatant misinformation” Trump’s repeated claims that South Africa was committing “genocide against Afrikaners” - descendants of Dutch settlers - and confiscating land from white citizens.