South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa says “boycott politics doesn’t work” as he hit back at US President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the G20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg later this month.
Trump has said that no US official would attend the gathering over widely discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in South Africa.
Speaking outside parliament, Ramaphosa said the US’s “absence is their loss” and that the boycott would not prevent the meeting from going ahead, according to the AFP news agency.
He added that the US was “giving up the very important role that they should be playing as the biggest economy in the world”.
The G20 summit is taking place between 22-23 November but in a post on social media, Trump said it was a “total disgrace” that South Africa was hosting it.
He 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.
Then over the weekend, he doubled down on his claims that “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”.
“No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue,” he added.
Trump has previously said that while he is trying to restrict the number of refugees the US accepts, Afrikaners would be welcome.
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