WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that no U.S. government officials would be attending the Group of 20 summit this year in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.
Trump had already announced he would not attend the annual summit for heads of state from the globe’s leading and emerging economies. Vice President JD Vance had been scheduled to attend in Trump’s place, 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.
“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” Trump said on his social media site. In his post, Trump cited “abuses” of Afrikaners, including violence and death as well as confiscation of their land and farms.
The Trump administration has long accused the South African government of allowing minority white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted and attacked. As it restricted the number of refugees admitted annually to the U.S. to 7,500, the administration indicated that most will be 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.”
Nonetheless, the administration 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.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G20 meeting for foreign ministers because its agenda focused on diversity, inclusion and climate change efforts.
