Trump bars South Africa from Miami G20, revives false “white genocide” claims

Donald Trump has announced that South Africa will not be invited to next year’s G20 summit in Miami, using social media to repeat long-debunked claims of a white “genocide” in the country and escalate his standoff with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government.

“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”

He doubled down on the narrative that Afrikaners are facing systematic extermination, despite broad agreement among human rights bodies that no such genocide exists.

“The South African Government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific Human Right [sic] Abuses endured by Afrikaners,” Trump said, adding: “To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them.”

He also accused the media of ignoring what he called “this genocide”, singling out the New York Times as “soon to be out of business”.

The outburst follows an awkward diplomatic episode at the G20 summit in Johannesburg, the first time Africa has hosted the forum. The Trump administration boycotted the event entirely, with no senior US officials in attendance.

“They are killing white people… Perhaps, worst of all, the soon to be out of business New York Times and the Fake News Media won’t issue a word against this genocide,” Trump wrote in an earlier post.

Traditionally, the outgoing G20 host passes a gavel to the next country. But South Africa did not hand the symbolic gavel to a US representative, a move Trump labelled a “slight”.

“At the conclusion of the G20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our U.S. Embassy,” he wrote. “Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20.”

Despite the escalating rhetoric, the two countries remain economically intertwined. The US is South Africa’s second-largest single-country trading partner after China, with bilateral trade valued at around $26.2bn in 2024.