Ramaphosa hits back after Trump says South Africa won’t be invited to 2026 G20 summit
Pretoria responded with unusual sharpness. President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a lengthy statement calling Trump's remarks "regrettable," stressing that South Africa remains a "full, active and constructive" G20 member and "does not appreciate insults from another country about its worth" on global platforms.
Relations between the United States and South Africa slid further into open acrimony on Wednesday after President Donald Trump declared that Washington would not invite Pretoria to the 2026 G20 summit in Miami.
Trump accused South Africa's government of ignoring "human rights abuses" against white farmers and refusing to hand over the G20 presidency to a senior US diplomat, a post typically transferred without fanfare.
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Pretoria responded with unusual sharpness. President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a lengthy statement calling Trump's remarks "regrettable," stressing that South Africa remains a "full, active and constructive" G20 member and "does not appreciate insults from another country about its worth" on global platforms.
South Africa, he noted, is a founding member of the G20 and participates "in its own name and right"—not by Washington's invitation.
The row caps an already frosty year in US–South Africa relations.
Trump has taken a markedly punitive line against Pretoria, driven by ideological disagreements, South Africa's case against Israel at the ICJ, and its growing diplomatic alignment with parts of the Global South.
Washington pointedly boycotted the G20 Leaders' Summit in Johannesburg last weekend, dispatching only an embassy official to collect the presidency baton, an unmistakable snub in diplomatic choreography.
Pretoria insists the summit was a success, delivering a declaration that reaffirms support for multilateralism.
It also highlighted that, while the US government stayed away, American businesses and civil-society groups turned up in large numbers at G20 side events—evidence, it says, of continued US engagement despite White House hostility.
The clash now risks spilling into 2026, when Miami is due to host the next summit. By threatening to exclude South Africa outright, a move without precedent in G20 history, Trump has placed the forum's consensus-driven ethos under strain.
Pretoria, for its part, has framed the dispute as a test of sovereignty, dignity and multilateral equality.
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