Total disgrace’: Trump boycotts South Africa’s G20 summit over claims its white population is being persecuted

Donald Trump has warned no US officials will attend the G20 summit in South Africa over claims white people are being persecuted in the country.

The US President said it is a "total disgrace" that South Africa is hosting the meeting between leaders from the world's largest economies.

They are set to meet in Johannesburg later this month, but Mr Trump is fuming over the allegation that white farmers are being poorly treated.

He wrote on 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.

"No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!”

President Trump Meets With South African President Cyril Ramaphosa At The White House

President Trump Meets With South African President Cyril Ramaphosa At The White House. Picture: Getty

It comes as after Mr Trump said South Africa should not be in the G20 at and that he would send vice-president JD Vance to go in his place.

"South Africa shouldn't even be in the Gs any more, because what's happened there is bad,” he said on Wednesday.

The Trump administration has long argued the South African government has allowed minority white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted.

This is a claim the South African government has fiercely denied.

Its foreign ministry said in a statement: "The South African government wishes to state, for the record, that the characterisation of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical.

"Furthermore, the claim that this community faces persecution, is not substantiated by fact."

It comes after the US granted asylum to 59 white South Africans as part of a resettlement programme which Washington hailed as giving sanctuary after facing racial discrimination.

That month, Mr Trump met with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and ambushed him with the unproven claim that a “genocide” is taking place against white Afrikaners.

Mr Ramaphosa has told Trump the information he has heard of the alleged discrimination and persecution of the white population is “completely false”

.Meanwhile, the country’s most recent crime statistics do not suggest that more white people have been the victims of violent crime than other racial groups.