Trump Says U.S. Will Boycott G-20 In South Africa, Cites Concerns Over Treatment Of White Farmers

United States president Donald Trump on Friday said that the US government officials would not be attending the G20 Summit in South Africa this year due to the country's treatment of white farmers. Trump called it to be a disgrace citing “abuses” of Afrikaners, including violence and death as well as confiscation of their land and farms.

He had earlier announced that he would not attend the annual summit for heads of state from the globe's leading and emerging economies. Vice President JD Vance was set to attend in place of Trump but a person familiar with Vance's plans, who was granted anonymity to talk about his schedule, said Vance would no longer travel there for the summit, AP reported. 

Trump made the statement on his social media platform stating “It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa.” 

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G-20 meeting for Foreign Ministers because its agenda focused on diversity, inclusion and climate change efforts.

The Trump administration has long accused the South African government of allowing minority white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted and attacked. The government has also restricted the refugee intake from the nation to the US to 7,500 with most of them being white South Africans who it claimed faced discrimination and violence at home.

But the government of South Africa has said it is surprised by the accusations of discrimination, because white people in the country generally have a much higher standard of living than its Black residents, more than three decades after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule.

The country's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said he's told Trump that information about the alleged discrimination and persecution of Afrikaners is “completely false.” The administration, however, has kept up its criticisms of the South African government. Earlier this week during an economic speech in Miami, Trump said South Africa should be thrown out of the Group of 20.