Ramaphosa: 'Boycott politics doesn't work' after Trump skips G20 summit

Johannesburg – South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa criticized US President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the G20 summit, saying that boycotts do not stop international meetings.

Trump announced that no US officials would attend the Johannesburg summit, citing widely discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in South Africa. Speaking outside parliament, Ramaphosa said the US “absence is their loss” and emphasized that the boycott would not prevent the summit from going ahead.

He added that the United States was “giving up the very important role that they should be playing as the biggest economy in the world.”

The G20 summit is scheduled for 22-23 November. Trump had initially claimed that South Africa should not host the summit at all and announced that he would send Vice-President JD Vance in his place. Over the weekend, Trump doubled down on allegations that Afrikaners are being killed and that their land and farms are being confiscated illegally.

South African authorities have dismissed these claims as “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence,” noting that no white farmers have had land confiscated without compensation.