South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the upcoming G20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg on November 22 to 23, saying “boycott politics doesn’t work.”
Trump announced that no American officials would attend, citing discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in South Africa.
Speaking to reporters outside parliament, Ramaphosa said that the U.S.’s “absence is their loss,” stressing that the boycott would not disrupt the summit. He further noted that Washington was “abandoning a crucial role it ought to play as the world’s largest economy.”
Earlier, Trump argued that South Africa shouldn’t even be part of the G20 and announced that Vice-President JD Vance would attend in his place but he later took it to social media to call it a “total disgrace” that South Africa was chosen to host the event.
Over the weekend, Trump doubled down on his controversial remarks, claiming that “Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers, are being killed and their land and farms unlawfully seized.”
He went on to declare that “no U.S. government official will attend as long as these human rights violations persist.”
Ramaphosa said that “boycotting never achieves anything of great impact, because decisions will be taken that will move the various issues ahead.”
South Africa currently holds the G20 chair and will host the summit for the first time on African soil. Each year, a different member country assumes the G20 presidency, setting the agenda for leaders to discuss major global economic issues, with the U.S. scheduled to take over after South Africa.
Trump is not the only leader skipping the summit. His close ally, Argentina’s President Javier Milei, has also said he will not attend, sending Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno in his place, AFP reports.
The South African government has rejected claims of a white genocide as “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence,” adding that no white farmers have had their land seized without compensation.
