WASHINGTON, Nov. 27– U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will not invite South Africa to attend next year’s Group of 20 (G20) summit in Miami, Florida, and will halt all U.S. aid to the country.
“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 on his social media platform Truth Social.
He added that the United States would “stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.” Trump has repeatedly claimed that white people in South Africa are being killed and their farms are being seized at random — allegations the South African government has repeatedly rejected throughout the year.
Trump on Wednesday also criticized South Africa for refusing to hand over the G20 presidency to a senior U.S. diplomat at the summit’s closing ceremony over the weekend.
South Africa earlier said it was an insult for President Cyril Ramaphosa to hand over to a junior U.S. official.
Tensions between Washington and Pretoria have escalated since Trump returned to office in late January. In February, Trump signed an executive order to freeze U.S. aid to South Africa, accusing the Expropriation Act — a land reform law signed by Ramaphosa in January — of “discriminating” against the country’s white population.
In response, the South African government pushed back against the White House’s accusations, saying the aid freeze “lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid.”
In February, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that he would boycott the G20 summit in Johannesburg.
In March, Washington expelled then South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, further straining the bilateral relations.
The expulsion followed an earlier address by the ambassador, in which he criticized Trump. In May, Trump confronted visiting South African President Ramaphosa at the White House with conspiracy theories on “white genocide” in South Africa, which Ramaphosa firmly denied.
At the time, Ramaphosa, who had arrived in Washington to improve trade terms and ease bilateral tensions, rejected Trump’s assertions during their meeting.
The South African president refuted the notion that white South Africans are fleeing the country due to racist policies, noting that the majority of crime victims in his country are Black.
Earlier this month, Trump announced that no U.S. officials would attend the G20 summit. (Namibia Daily News/Xinhua)
