In a move that has sent diplomatic ripples around the globe, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that no officials from his administration will attend the upcoming Group of 20 (G20) summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, scheduled for November 22-23, 2025. The boycott, announced on Truth Social on November 8, comes amid Trump’s claims that a white minority group in South Africa, the Afrikaners, are being violently persecuted and that their land is being confiscated without compensation.
Trump’s statement, posted to his favored social media platform, was unequivocal: “No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.” He went further, calling it a “total disgrace” that the G20 would be held in South Africa and declaring, “Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” According to USA Today, Trump had already decided not to attend the summit himself, with Vice President JD Vance set to represent the U.S. before the boycott was announced.
The G20, a gathering of leaders from the world’s largest economies, is typically seen as an opportunity for global economic cooperation. This year’s summit, hosted by South Africa as the current rotating chair, was expected to focus on themes of “solidarity, equality, and sustainability.” But with the U.S. now absent, the tone and impact of the event are likely to shift.
The roots of Trump’s boycott can be traced to his administration’s renewed focus on the plight of Afrikaners—a white minority group of roughly 2.7 million people in a nation of 62 million, descended mainly from Dutch, French, and German settlers. Trump’s support for Afrikaners has not been subtle. In February 2025, he issued an executive order halting U.S. financial assistance to South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of this group. The administration also prioritized Afrikaners for refugee status in the U.S., allocating most of the 7,500 available places for refugees in the current fiscal year to white South Africans.
Trump’s accusations center on a new law—the Expropriation Act—passed by South Africa’s government in February 2025. This law allows for the seizure of land for public interest, in some cases without compensation. Some Afrikaners fear the law targets them specifically, threatening their property and livelihoods. Trump, in both speeches and social media posts, has echoed these concerns, saying, “Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.”
Yet, the South African government and many Afrikaners themselves have pushed back hard against Trump’s narrative. According to NPR, a group of more than 40 prominent Afrikaners—including writers, journalists, musicians, and clergy—signed an open letter in October 2025 rejecting the idea that they are victims of racial persecution. “We reject the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa,” the letter stated. “We are not pawns in America’s culture wars.”
Max du Preez, an Afrikaner journalist and one of the signatories, told NPR, “There is no genocide in South Africa, there’s absolutely no persecution of anyone based on race. Our constitution has iron-clad protection of every citizen’s human rights.” He added, “Not a single square inch of white-owned land has been confiscated since we became a democracy in 1994. Please stop lying about us and using us as pawns.”
Christo van der Rheede, former head of South Africa’s largest agricultural organization and now leader of the FW De Klerk Foundation, echoed these sentiments. After Trump’s G20 announcement, he said, “It is now very important for all South Africans to unite and refute the statements by President Donald Trump…that Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. This is simply not true.” Van der Rheede warned that the U.S. boycott could harm American business interests in South Africa and urged the administration to reconsider.
Official South African statistics appear to support the critics of Trump’s narrative. In 2024, there were more than 26,000 homicides in South Africa, but only 37 were classified as farm murders, according to an Afrikaner lobby group. Experts on rural attacks say the primary motive is robbery, not race, and that Black farmers and workers are also victims of such crimes. The South African government has repeatedly stated that Trump’s claims are “not substantiated by fact.”
Nevertheless, Trump’s stance has found support among some Afrikaner groups and far-right activists, both in South Africa and abroad. For years, certain Afrikaner organizations have lobbied U.S. lawmakers with the “white genocide” narrative, seeking to draw international attention and support. Trump’s administration has amplified these claims, not only through the G20 boycott but also by suspending most refugee admissions except for white South Africans and by imposing tariffs and diplomatic penalties on Pretoria.
The diplomatic fallout has been swift. The South African ambassador to Washington was expelled, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in South Africa earlier this year, dismissing the summit’s theme as “DEI and climate change.” Trump himself, during a speech in Miami on November 5, declared, “South Africa shouldn’t even be in the Gs anymore because what’s happened there is bad.”
Adding another layer to the drama, Trump announced in September 2025 that he will host the 2026 G20 summit at his own golf resort in Doral, Florida, near Miami. The move has raised eyebrows internationally, with critics questioning the optics of such a decision.
Despite the U.S. boycott, South African officials remain upbeat about the summit’s significance. Chrispin Phiri, spokesman for the Department of International Relations, told NPR, “We really think this is going to be one of the most significant G20’s to date albeit without the U.S.A. I think that is something that will affect the U.S. as a country, not the entire G20.” The summit is expected to draw European heads of state and China’s President Xi Jinping, among others.
As the G20 summit approaches, the rift between the U.S. and South Africa highlights not only the complexities of race, land, and history in the post-apartheid era but also the growing influence of domestic culture wars on international diplomacy. For now, the question remains: will the U.S. absence weaken the G20, or simply isolate Washington at a time when global cooperation is urgently needed?
With the world’s eyes on Johannesburg, the stakes for both U.S.-South African relations and the broader G20 agenda have rarely been higher.
