South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has criticised as “regrettable” a decision by United States President Donald Trump to exclude South Africa from the 2026 G20 Summit scheduled to take place in Miami, Florida.
Trump announced the move in a social media post on Sunday, alleging that South Africa had refused to hand over the G20 presidency to a US embassy representative during last week’s summit in Johannesburg. “Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20,” he wrote.
Although G20 members do not require formal invitations to attend the annual meeting of the world’s major economies, Trump suggested Washington could enforce the exclusion by imposing visa restrictions on South African delegates.
Trump boycotted the Johannesburg summit, citing a discredited claim that South Africa’s white minority faces systematic killings and land dispossession.
He repeated the allegations in his post, accusing the South African government of “killing white people and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them.”
The South African government has repeatedly rejected such claims as baseless and unsupported by credible evidence.
Responding to Trump’s announcement, Ramaphosa said the United States had been expected to participate in the Johannesburg summit but chose instead to stay away.
He explained that, in the absence of a US delegation, the official instruments of the G20 Presidency “were duly handed over to a US Embassy official at the Headquarters of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.”
Ramaphosa described Trump’s latest move as punitive and driven by “misinformation and distortions” about South Africa, despite Pretoria’s attempts to stabilise and improve bilateral relations with Washington.
In a separate post on Truth Social, Trump claimed South Africa had “demonstrated to the world they were not a country worthy of membership anywhere” and announced the immediate halt of “all payments and subsidies” to the country.
South African officials have urged other G20 members to uphold the integrity of the multilateral forum and resist efforts to undermine the rights and responsibilities of member states.
The Johannesburg summit, historic as the first G20 meeting held on African soil concluded with a joint declaration committing members to enhanced cooperation on climate change, global economic stability, and reducing inequality.
The United States lodged objections to sections of the declaration, accusing South Africa of “weaponising” its presidency.
