US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that South Africa will be excluded from the 2026 G20 summit in Miami, escalating a diplomatic crisis that has seen bilateral relations deteriorate sharply since his return to office in January 2025.

The decision follows a dispute over the ceremonial transfer of the G20 presidency after South Africa concluded its year-long chairmanship of the forum. Trump accused South Africa of refusing to hand the presidency to a senior US Embassy representative, though South African officials maintained they followed proper diplomatic protocol by conducting the handover between officials of equivalent rank.

The United States boycotted the entire G20 summit held in Johannesburg on November 22-23, 2025, with Trump citing alleged human rights abuses against white Afrikaners as justification. In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed the South African government is "killing white people and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them."

These allegations have been consistently rejected by South African authorities and contradicted by official crime statistics. Police data released in May 2025 showed that during the January-March 2025 quarter, six people were murdered on farms, five were Black and only one was white. More than 40 prominent white South Africans, including analysts, economists and journalists, published an open letter in November 2025 describing Trump's narrative as "not only misleading, but dangerous."

Since the US did not attend the summit, South Africa conducted a low-key handover ceremony on November 25 at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation headquarters in Pretoria, transferring the presidency to a US Embassy official.

During a meeting with South African President Cyril #Ramaphosa, Donald #Trump repeated several false and misleading claims about the treatment of white farmers. These include allegations of genocide, violent land seizures, and misrepresented imagery. pic.twitter.com/2JWmYbojvz

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) May 23, 2025

Aid cutoff, financial stakes

In his announcement barring South Africa from the 2026 summit, Trump declared that the country "has demonstrated to the World that it is not a country worthy of Membership anywhere" and ordered an immediate halt to "all payments and subsidies to them."

South Africa's presidency responded by describing Trump's decision as "regrettable," emphasizing that the country is a G20 member "in its own name and right, whose G20 membership is at the behest of all other members." The statement stressed that South Africa is "a sovereign constitutional democratic country and does not appreciate insults from another country about its worth in participating in global platforms."

PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA NOTES US STATEMENT ON SOUTH AFRICA’S G20 PARTICIPATION

President @CyrilRamaphosa has noted the regrettable statement by President Donald Trump on South Africa’s participation in the 2026 G20 meetings.

The G20 South Africa 2025 Leaders’ Summit attended by…

— The Presidency 🇿🇦 (@PresidencyZA) November 26, 2025

The presidency called on G20 members to "reaffirm its continued operation in the spirit of multilateralism, based on consensus, with all members participating on an equal footing."

Trump's hostility toward South Africa stems from multiple sources, including Executive Order 14204 signed in February 2025, which cut US aid and prioritized White South African refugees for resettlement. The relationship has also suffered due to the US taking issue with South Africa's 2023 case against "Israel" at the International Court of Justice accusing it of genocide in Gaza. 

The G20 operates as a consensus-based forum without a formal mechanism for expelling members, raising questions about whether the host country can unilaterally bar a member nation from participation.

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