Donald Trump has said the US will not attend the G20 summit in South Africa over widely discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in the country.
The US president stated that it was a total disgrace that South Africa is hosting the meeting, where leaders from the world's largest economies will gather in Johannesburg later this month.
South Africa's foreign ministry described the decision by the White House as regrettable.
None of South Africa's political parties - including those that represent Afrikaners and the white community in general - have claimed that there is a genocide in South Africa.
Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social: It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa. 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, he wrote.
He asserted that no US government official would attend as long as these alleged human rights abuses continue.
Earlier, Trump suggested that South Africa should not be in the G20 at all, and that he would send vice-president JD Vance, instead of attending himself. However, the White House later clarified that no US official will go to the summit.
Every year, a different member state hosts the G20 and sets the agenda for the summit - with the US due to take its turn after South Africa. The South African foreign ministry insisted that the characterization of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical.
Claims that this community faces persecution, they noted, are not substantiated by fact.
Trump's administration has previously granted refugee status to Afrikaners, alleging a 'genocide' is taking place in South Africa, a claim that South African officials dismissed as widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence. The situation has raised significant tensions between the US and South Africa, illustrating a complex web of socio-political issues affecting both nations.
