The G20 leaders summit will go ahead as planned despite US President Trump’s boycott over alleged mistreatment of white Afrikaners, the department of international relations & co-operation (Dirco) said at the weekend.
Trump announced on Friday that no US officials would attend the two-day event, the latest twist in an ongoing political row in which he has continued to maintain that Afrikaners are being persecuted despite repeated attempts by the SA government to convince him this is not the case.
“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in SA. Afrikaners (people who are descended from Dutch settlers and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue,” he said.
Trump said in September that while he would not attend the leader’s summit, US vice-president JD Vance would go in his place. However, JD Vance is no longer participating, according to weekend reports by Reuters and Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The department said Trump’s post was “regrettable” and his claims about the persecution of Afrikaners misplaced.
“The SA government wishes to state, for the record, that the characterisation of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical. Furthermore, the claim that this community faces persecution is not substantiated by fact,” it said.
Presidential spokesperson Vincent Mngwenya Magwenya said Trump’s move had no implications for SA’s leadership of the G20. “As SA, we remain well engaged with the world and the US. It’s the US that’s disengaging from the world.”
The lack of US presence at the leaders’ summit would have little effect on the final outcome, as negotiations for the declarations that would be made had largely been concluded already, said Sunesha Sanusha Naidu, senior research fellow at the Institute for Global Dialogue.
Many of the G20 finance and sherpa track meetings in the run-up to the summit had included US officials, she said.
US government shutdown
The US government shutdown may have contributed to Trump’s decision, she said. It is unclear whether US civil servants are permitted to travel during the shutdown, which shows no immediate sign of ending.
Trump’s continued targeting of SA occurred took place against the backdrop of a Republican review of the US relationship with SA, noted political analyst Daniel Silke, director of Political Futures Consulting.
“This fits in with the deep suspicions the Trump administration has of SA. To acknowledge SA’s participation in the G20 would probably undermine the desire by some in the Republican party to investigate the relationship and perhaps even take action against SA,” he said.
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