As nations prepare for the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States will not attend, citing widely discredited claims that white South Africans are being persecuted.
On his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump wrote, “It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa. Afrikaners, people descended from Dutch, French, and German settlers, are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No U.S. government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue”.
He called it a “total disgrace” that South Africa is hosting the meeting, where leaders from the world’s largest economies will convene later this month.
In response, South Africa’s foreign ministry described the White House decision as “regrettable”, noting that none of the country’s political parties, including those representing Afrikaners or the broader white community, have claimed a genocide is occurring.
“The characterization of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical. Furthermore, the claim that this community faces persecution is not substantiated by fact”.
South Africa’s government called the claims of a white genocide “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence”, pointing to the limited uptake of the U.S. refugee offer by South Africans.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has repeatedly accused South Africa of discriminating against its white minority. The administration has granted Afrikaners refugee status, citing an alleged “genocide,” and has prioritized white South Africans in refugee admissions, while capping overall U.S. refugee admissions at a record low.
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