After Trump claims the US won't invite South Africa to the G20 next year South Africa responds
After Trump claims the US won't invite South Africa to the G20 next year, South Africa responds.
Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, called US President Donald Trump's statement that South Africa will not be asked to participate in the G20 conference in Florida next year "regrettable".
Trump claimed on social media that during last week's summit in Johannesburg, South Africa had refused to give the G20 presidency to a representative of the US embassy.
"Therefore, 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."
Members of the G20, a conference of the largest economies in the world, may be excluded due to visa limitations but do not require an invitation.
Despite their efforts, the top political leadership in South Africa "should by now accept" that "there won't be a reset of the relationship" between the two nations, according to presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya.
He told the BBC, "If visas are denied, well, then we will have to move on and look beyond the G20 in the US," when asked how they would proceed.
He stated that they were concentrated on collaborating with other G20 members to maintain the momentum of the topics discussed during the Johannesburg summit.
Due to a widely debunked allegation that South Africa's white minority is the target of widespread murders and land grabs, Trump abstained from the meeting.
The United States was supposed to attend the G20 meetings, according to a statement from Ramaphosa, "but unfortunately, it elected not to attend the G20 Leaders Summit in Johannesburg out of its own volition". However, he pointed out that there were a few US companies and civil society organisations.
According to him, "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" because the US delegation was not present.
Trump has been critical of the international and domestic policies of the South African administration, and the low-key handover seems to have infuriated him even more.
He declared on Wednesday that the government was "killing white people and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them." He has previously asserted that a white genocide was occurring in South Africa.
Such accusations have been continually denied by the South African government as being unsupported by credible evidence and largely disregarded.
Ramaphosa expressed sorrow that Trump continued "to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country" in spite of efforts to mend relations with the US.
Trump declared a halt to "all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately" and claimed that South Africa had "demonstrated to the world they were not a country worthy of membership anywhere" in the Truth Social post on Wednesday.
Officials from South Africa have urged fellow G20 members to stand together and protect the rights of all of the group's member nations.
A unified declaration pledging "multilateral co-operation" on economic inequality and climate change mitigation marked the conclusion of the G20 summit, which was hosted in Africa for the first time.
The United States, which has accused South Africa of weaponising its leadership of the group this year, objected to the declaration's adoption.
Pumza Fihlani's additional reporting from Johannesburg
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