President Donald Trump announced last week that South Africa will not be invited to the 2026 G-20 summit in Florida, citing what he described as “horrific human rights abuses.”
Clayson Monyela, head of diplomacy for South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation, rejected the idea that the country could be excluded from the summit.
“South Africa is a founding member of the G-20. We don’t get invited to G-20 meetings and leaders summit. Those are gatherings of members. If other members allow this then the G-20 will die,” Monyela told Fox News Digital.
“Other countries have already told us that they too will boycott the U.S. G-20 if South Africa is excluded,” Monyela added.
If implemented, the decision would break more than two decades of precedent and mark the first time a member nation has been formally excluded from the G-20, a forum that brings together major advanced and emerging economies representing roughly 80 percent of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population. The group has traditionally operated on the principle of inclusion.
That tradition was already tested earlier this month when the United States boycotted the 2025 G-20 meeting in Johannesburg, Fox noted.
The Trump administration said the South African government had failed to address what it described as violence and discrimination in rural farming communities. It also objected to the Johannesburg meeting’s emphasis on climate and development issues rather than core economic priorities.
The boycott represented a significant departure from prior U.S. participation, leaving the world’s largest economy absent from a key venue for global economic policymaking.
In the same Truth Social post, Trump also said he would suspend U.S. payments to South Africa.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the world they are not a country worthy of membership anywhere and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,” Trump noted in his posts.
It remains unclear how the move might affect South Africa’s status within the G-20 or broader U.S.–South Africa relations ahead of the 2026 summit in Florida. Ties between President Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa have deteriorated in recent months.
In February, Trump suspended U.S. aid to South Africa, alleging discrimination against White farmers. Tensions rose again in March when the State Department expelled the South African ambassador, declaring him “persona non grata.”
The two leaders also clashed during a May meeting in the Oval Office, where Trump pressed Ramaphosa over allegations that White Afrikaners were being targeted and killed. Ramaphosa rejected the claims, saying he had seen no evidence to support them, Fox reported.
In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool “a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS” on the X platform.
“We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA,” Rubio continued regarding Rasool as he linked to a Breitbart News article that reported disparaging comments the South African diplomat made about President Trump.
The diplomat was expelled after he told those gathered for an event recent that Trump was leading a white supremacist movement around the world.
While addressing the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg, Rasool sought to clarify Trump’s recent foreign policy positions, specifically his opposition to South Africa’s property expropriation legislation and its alliances with Iran, Hamas, and other nations.
