The logo of the G20 South Africa 2025 summit at the IMF/World Bank 2025 Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 16.Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
South African leaders are shrugging off Donald Trump’s announcement of a full-scale U.S. boycott of next week’s G20 summit in Johannesburg, after a rambling speech in which the U.S. President appeared to mix up South Africa and South America.
Mr. Trump, in a social-media post, said it was a “total disgrace” that South Africa is host to the G20 summit this year, and he vowed that no U.S. officials would attend.
Two months ago, he had said that Vice-President JD Vance would lead the U.S. delegation at the summit, but his latest announcement cancelled that plan.
South Africa is scheduled to hand the rotating G20 presidency to the United States at the end of the Nov. 22-23 summit, but there might not be anyone in attendance to receive the handover − even though Mr. Trump says he will play host to the group’s summit at one of his golf resorts near Miami next year.
South Africa dismissed the Trump boycott. “We look forward to hosting a successful G20 Leaders’ Summit,” its foreign ministry said on the weekend.
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Most G20 leaders, including Prime Minister Mark Carney, are expected to attend the summit. Canada is also inviting South Africa to the latest meeting of G7 foreign ministers this week, even though the African country is not a member of the group of seven industrialized economies.
Mr. Trump launched his latest attack on the G20 last Thursday in a speech in Miami, in which he appeared to confuse South Africa with South America. “For generations, Miami has been a haven for those fleeing communist tyranny in South Africa,” he said in the speech, seeming to refer to Miami’s large community of exiles from Cuba.
“Look at South Africa, what’s going on,” he continued. “Look at South America, what’s going on. You know, we have a G20 meeting in South Africa. South Africa shouldn’t even be in the Gs any more, because what’s happened there is bad. I’m not going.”
His reference to “the Gs” appeared to mean the G7 and the G20. Nineteen countries, plus the European Union and the African Union, belong to the G20.
But a day after the Miami speech, even as Mr. Trump was reiterating his boycott plan, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand disclosed that she had invited foreign ministers from South Africa and seven other non-member countries to join the G7 meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Niagara region of Ontario.
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Canada, as current chair of the G7, has been forging closer links with South Africa, which holds the G20 leadership this year. The two countries see value in co-ordinating their work for the two blocs, and their foreign ministers and other officials have held several meetings to discuss shared goals.
Another prominent G20 member, Germany, jumped to the defence of South Africa on the weekend. “Germany looks forward to the summit in South Africa,” said Andreas Peschke, its ambassador to South Africa, in a social-media post. “For the first time G20 is hosted in Africa. Historic.”
The German government said it supports South Africa’s official themes for the summit: solidarity, equality and sustainability.
Mr. Trump has been hostile to South Africa since the beginning of his second term this year, falsely accusing it of conducting a “white genocide” and seizing land from white farmers without compensation.
But he has also been hostile to multilateral institutions of all kinds, including the G20. He has slashed funding to the United Nations, pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement.
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In February, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to attend a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Johannesburg, complaining that South Africa was promoting diversity, equity, climate issues and other “very bad things” at the global group.
In his latest attack on South Africa’s role as G20 host, Mr. Trump repeated the false allegation that Afrikaners – a white minority in South Africa who dominated the apartheid system of government before 1994 – are being “slaughtered” and their farmland is being “illegally confiscated.” Mr. Rubio immediately echoed the allegations, saying he applauded the decision to boycott the G20.
In reality, South Africa’s white minority enjoys far higher incomes and much lower unemployment than other racial groups in the country, and still controls most farmland and large corporations.
Because of its journey from white-minority rule to full democracy, South Africa is uniquely positioned to help the G20 promote “genuine solidarity” to bridge the world’s deep inequalities, the South African foreign ministry said in its weekend response to Mr. Trump.
The country’s largest political party, the African National Congress, said Mr. Trump’s boycott of the G20 was “part of a long and disgraceful pattern of imperial arrogance and disinformation.”
In a statement, the ANC said Mr. Trump’s accusations were “deliberate attempts to distort the reality of South Africa’s democracy and to mobilize racial fear for political gain in the United States.”