President Cyril Ramaphosa has described United States President Donald Trump’s announcement that South Africa will not be invited to the 2026 Group of 20 (G20) summit as regrettable, as tensions escalate between Pretoria and Washington over the transfer of the G20 presidency.
Trump announced on Wednesday, November 26, that South Africa would not receive an invitation to the 2026 G20 summit in Miami, Florida. He stated that South Africa had refused to hand off the G20 presidency to a senior representative from the US Embassy who attended the closing ceremony in Johannesburg last weekend.
Trump posted on Truth Social that South Africa has demonstrated to the world they are not a country worthy of membership anywhere, and announced he would stop all payments and subsidies to them effective immediately. The exclusion marks the first time a country would be outright excluded from G20 meetings in the forum’s more than 20 year history.
Ramaphosa responded through his office that South Africa noted the regrettable statement by Trump. The South African presidency stated that South Africa is a sovereign constitutional democratic country and does not appreciate insults from another country about its worth in participating in global platforms.
Presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that G20 members should by now accept there won’t be a reset of the relationship between South Africa and the United States. He added that if visas were denied, South Africa would move on and focus on other partnerships within the G20.
By tradition, the host country hands over a symbolic wooden gavel to the nation taking over the G20 presidency, but there was no American official on hand to receive it from Ramaphosa because of the US boycott. The US wanted to send a representative from its embassy, but South Africa refused, saying it was an insult for Ramaphosa to hand over to what it called a junior official.
Following the absence of the US from the Johannesburg meeting, the G20 presidency instruments were officially handed to a US Embassy official at South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation. The two day summit wrapped up last Sunday without high level US representation.
Trump has claimed that white Afrikaner farmers in South Africa are being killed and that their land is being seized. The South African government and others, including some Afrikaners themselves, say Trump’s claims are the result of misinformation. In May, Trump hosted Ramaphosa at the White House for what devolved into a tense meeting that included Trump playing a video on television screens in the Oval Office with a montage of clips that he said backed up his genocide claims.
Magwenya told Daily Maverick that South Africa’s focus now is on working with other partners like France as the incoming president of the G7, and the United Kingdom as the 2027 G20 president to carry through the momentum from this year’s G20. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said publicly that he would seek to persuade Trump to extend an invitation to South Africa, stating that G7 and G20 formats should not be made smaller without good reason.
South Africa has been a target for Trump since he returned to office at the start of the year, with his administration casting the country as anti American because of its diplomatic ties with China, Russia and Iran.
