The Republican president, in a social media post, said South Africa had refused to hand over its G20 hosting responsibilities to a senior representative of the U.S. Embassy when the summit ended.
“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,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere,” he said, “and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”
South Africa said it considered the U.S. decision to appoint a local embassy official for the G20 handover an insult. The ceremony instead happened at its Foreign Ministry building after the summit “as the United States was not present at the summit,” a statement from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said.
The statement said Ramaphosa “noted the regrettable statement by President Donald Trump on South Africa’s participation in the 2026 G20 meetings.”
It also pushed back against Trump’s widely rejected claims that Afrikaner farmers are being killed and having their land taken away, saying that Trump “continues to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country.”
In some ways, Trump views next year’s G20 summit as personal, given that he announced it will be at his golf club in Doral, Florida.
The U.S. has now taken over the rotating presidency of the G20, leaving the long-term impact of the South African declaration unclear.
Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.
There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.
