President Donald Trump meets with President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
When South Africa hosts the G20 leadership summit in Johannesburg next week, United States President Donald Trump and his deputy JD Vance will be conspicuous by their absence from this crucial global showpiece.
While the US must be allowed to decide what events it wants to attend, the reasons given by Trump are bizarre and his rampage against South Africa, questioning the country’s G20 membership, should not go unchallenged.
In September, after keeping the world guessing for months, Trump indicated he would not attend the summit, but would send Vance. Last week, as has become his trademark, he changed tune and said no US official would attend, repeating the false narrative that South Africa was illegally confiscating land from whites and “slaughtering” them.
The latest attack on South Africa shows a pattern that began in February this year when Trump started his false white genocide crusade, aided by a few Afrikaners who have decided to turn their backs on the country by perpetuating this lie to benefit a minority group.
A few of these Afrikaners then migrated to the US at the invitation of the Trump administration. SA’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was subsequently expelled from the US, while President Cyril Ramaphosa’s choice for special envoy to Washington, Mcebisi Jonas, was rejected by the Trump government.
With the eyes of the world on SA as it hosts world leaders next week, the absence from the first summit on African soil of the US is an indictment on the Trump administration. The US is supposed to take over the presidency of the G20 from SA next week, and the traditional declaration statement is to be signed by all 20 member countries.
While the absence of Trump and Vance will not stop the summit, the US government has put the G20 in an unprecedented position. It is clear that Pretoria’s quiet diplomacy in its dealings with Trump is not bearing fruit.
For months now, Trump has used South Africa as a punchbag, defying all logic and sticking to his absurd claims of white genocide. The G20 summit could have offered him an opportunity to come to SA and see for himself that the narrative of whites being slaughtered and kicked off their land is just pure fiction.
For Trump to now go further and demand that South Africa be axed from the G20 based on this falsehood is not only outrageous, but also idiotic. It is clear that beyond the summit, Trump’s disdain for SA will continue unless Pretoria draws a line in the sand.
South Africa has been very lenient towards Trump, in the spirit of global cooperation, but he has chosen a path of conflict.
The madman of the White House must be stopped in his tracks.