Donald Trump has said the US will not attend the G20 summit in South Africa over widely discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in the country.
The US president said it was a “total disgrace” that South Africa is hosting the meeting, where leaders from the world’s largest economies will gather in Johannesburg later this month.
South Africa’s foreign ministry described the decision by the White House as “regrettable”, while a spokesman for the foreign ministry, Chrispin Phiri, told BBC News that the success of the summit will not “rest on one member state”.
None of South Africa’s political parties claim that there is a genocide in South Africa.
That includes parties that represent Afrikaners and the white community in general.
Speaking to the Newshour programme, Mr Phiri said that Trump was “orchestrating an imagined crisis… using the painful history of South Africa’s colonial past”.
He also said there was “absolutely no evidence of white persecution in South Africa”, adding: “South Africa does have its problems and we are dealing with those. I think crime affects everyone, regardless of their race.”
“We will move on without the United States,” he said.
Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social: “It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa.
“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,” he wrote.
“No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue.”
South Africa’s government said the claims of a white genocide are “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence”.
The claims were dismissed as “clearly imagined” by a South African court in February.
Trump had earlier said South Africa should not be in the G20 at all, and that he would send vice-president JD Vance, instead of attending himself.
But now the White House says no US official will go.
Every year, a different member state hosts the G20 and sets the agenda for the summit – with the US due to take its turn after South Africa.
The South African foreign ministry said in a statement: “The South African 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.”
Since returning to office in January, Trump has repeatedly accused South Africa of discriminating against its white minority, including in May when when he confronted his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office.
The Trump administration has given Afrikaners refugee status, on the basis of the discredited “genocide” claims. Last week, the White House announced plans to cap refugee admissions at a record low, and give priority to white South Africans. The South African government has pointed to the “limited uptake” of the offer by South Africans.
The G20 was founded in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis. The nations involved have more than 85% of the world’s wealth and its aim was to restore economic stability.
The first leaders’ summit was held in 2008 in response to that year’s global financial turmoil, to promote international co-operation.
Now the leaders get together each year – along with representatives of the European Union and African Union – to talk about the world’s economies and the issues countries are facing.
Source: BBC