United States President Donald Trump has announced that no US government officials will attend the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg, accusing South Africa of “human rights abuses” and claiming that white Afrikaners are being “killed and slaughtered” and their farms “illegally confiscated”.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social account: “It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa. Afrikaners, people who are descended from Dutch, and also French, and German settlers, are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!”
The remarks, which have drawn global attention, follow months of tension between Washington and Pretoria over the US government’s Afrikaner resettlement programme — a scheme the South African government has previously described as baseless and misinformed.
Earlier this week, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) rejected what it called “false and misleading narratives” about conditions faced by white South Africans.
“The claim of a so-called ‘white genocide’ in South Africa was widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence,” DIRCO said in a statement published by .
“Therefore, a programme designed to facilitate their immigration and resettlement as refugees is fundamentally flawed.”
Dirco added that South Africa “remains a constitutional democracy that upholds the rule of law and protects the rights of all its citizens”.
Spokesperson for International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola, Chrispin Phiri, speaking in a separate report, said: “We refute that these individuals are persecuted on the grounds of race or language. The idea that a particular race is being targeted on crime is also not founded on any evidence.”
Lamola has also previously told that “this claim of persecution is simply not factual” and that “white farmers are affected by crime like any other South Africans”.
The G20 summit is scheduled to take place in Johannesburg later this month.
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