The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to boycott the Group of 20 gathering in South Africa has received a fierce response from President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, Ramaphosa said it was “their loss” that the United States would be absent from the November 22 to 23 meeting. He added that “the United States needs to think again whether boycott politics actually works, because in my experience it doesn’t work.” His remarks came after the White House confirmed that no senior official would travel to Johannesburg.
Trump had revealed the boycott on social media last week, repeating discredited assertions that members of South Africa’s white minority are being violently targeted and stripped of land because of their race. His accusations have shaped months of attacks on South Africa’s Black-led government, including criticism of its legal complaint at the United Nations’ top court accusing Israel, a close U.S. ally, of genocide in Gaza.
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Ramaphosa stressed that the summit would proceed uninterrupted by United States’ absence. “It is unfortunate that the United States decided not to attend the G20,” he said. “The United States by not being at the G20, one must never think that we are not going to go on with the G20. The G20 will go on, all other heads of state will be here. In the end we will take fundamental decisions and their absence is their loss.” He added that the U.S. is “giving up the very important role that they should be playing as the biggest economy in the world.”
Tensions between Trump and Ramaphosa have simmered all year. During a May meeting at the White House, Trump confronted the South African president with the same unfounded claims about widespread killings of Afrikaners. Ramaphosa used that meeting to urge him to attend the G20, which will be hosted on the African continent for the first time.
Formed in 1999, the G20 brings together advanced economies and major developing nations to address global economic and development challenges. Its members include the United States, China, Russia, India, Japan, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union. South Africa is set to hand over the rotating presidency of the group to the United States at the end of the year.
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Trump intensified his attacks again last week, writing that it was “a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” and alleging that Afrikaners “are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” The president had already ruled out attending in person, but Vice President JD Vance had been expected to lead the delegation before the boycott was announced.
Claims of anti-white persecution in South Africa have circulated in conservative U.S. media since at least 2018, and both Trump and South African-born Elon Musk have accused the government of racism against whites because of its affirmative action policies intended to expand opportunities for the Black majority historically oppressed under apartheid. South African officials have dismissed these narratives as misinformation and evidence of a poor understanding of the country.
Diplomatic ties between the U.S. and South Africa have reached their lowest point since the end of apartheid in 1994. The United States expelled South Africa’s ambassador in March after remarks he made about Trump. Earlier in the year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to attend a G20 foreign ministers meeting in South Africa, accusing the hosts of “anti-Americanism” and criticizing their attention to issues such as climate change and global inequality.
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