How Trump’s support for a white minority group in South Africa led to a US boycott of the G20 summit

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) – U.S. President Donald Trump says that the United States government will boycott the Group of 20 summit this month in South Africa over his claims that a white minority group in that country is being violently persecuted.

Trump announced Friday on Truth Social that no U.S. government official will attend the Nov. 22-23 summit in Johannesburg “as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.” It was his latest criticism of the Black-led South African government, which has been a regular target for Trump since he returned to office.

In February, Trump issued an executive order stopping U.S. financial assistance to South Africa, citing its treatment of the Afrikaner white minority. The administration has also prioritized Afrikaners for refugee status in the U.S. and says they will be given most of the 7,500 places available this fiscal year.

The South African government – and some Afrikaners themselves – say Trump’s claims of persecution are baseless.

Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.

Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-1994, leading to decades of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. But Afrikaners are not a homogenous group, and some fought against apartheid. There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.

Afrikaners themselves are divided over Trump’s claims. Some say they face discrimination, but a group of leading Afrikaner business figures and academics said in an open letter last month that “the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa” is misleading.

Afrikaners’ Dutch-derived language is widely spoken in South Africa and is an official language, while Afrikaners are represented in every aspect of society. Afrikaners are some of South Africa’s richest entrepreneurs, some of its most successful sports stars, and also serve in government and are largely committed to South Africa’s multiracial democracy.

Trump said on Truth Social that Afrikaners “are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” The president’s comments are in reference to a relatively small number of attacks on Afrikaner farmers that he and others claim are racially motivated.

Trump has also pointed to a highly contentious law introduced by the South African government that allows land to be appropriated from private owners without compensation. Some Afrikaners fear that law is aimed at removing them from their land in favor of South Africa’s poor Black majority. Many South Africans, including opposition parties, have criticized the law, but it hasn’t led to land confiscations.

The South African government said in response to Trump’s Truth Social post that his claims were “not substantiated by fact.” It has said that Trump’s monthslong criticism of South Africa over Afrikaners is a result of misinformation because it misses the context that Black farmers and farmworkers are also killed in rural attacks, which make up a tiny percentage of the high violent crime rates.

There were more than 26,000 homicides in South Africa in 2024. Of those, 37 were farm murders, according to an Afrikaner lobby group that tracks them. Experts on rural attacks in South Africa have said the overriding motive for the violent farm invasions is robbery and not race.

Trump said it is a “total disgrace” that the G20 summit – a meeting of the leaders of the 19 top rich and developing economies, the European Union and the African Union – is being held in South Africa. He had already said he wouldn’t attend, and Vice President JD Vance was due to go in his place. The U.S. will take on the rotating presidency of the G20 after South Africa. Trump also said in a speech last week that South Africa should be thrown out of the G20.

Trump’s criticism of Africa’s most developed economy has gone beyond the issue of Afrikaners. His executive order in February said South Africa had taken “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies,” specifically with its decision to accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza at the United Nations’ top court.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G20 foreign ministers meeting in South Africa in February after deriding the host country’s G20 slogan of “solidarity, equality and sustainability” as “DEI and climate change.”