The United States is cutting off payments and subsidies to South Africa and the country will not be invited to next year's G20 summit in Miami, Florida, US President Donald Trump announced on his TruthSocial social media account.
He explained his absence from this year's G20 summit in South Africa by pointing to the country's government's refusal to acknowledge violations of the rights of Afrikaners (the white population of South Africa, descendants of European colonists).
“To put it bluntly, they kill white people and allow their farms to be arbitrarily taken away“, he wrote Trump.
He also claimed that at the closing ceremony, Pretoria refused to hand over the G20 presidency to a representative of the US embassy.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the world that it is not a country worthy of membership anywhere, and we are immediately terminating all payments and subsidies to them“, Trump stressed.
Trump has criticized the South African government since the beginning of his second term. In February, he ordered the suspension of all aid to Pretoria due to violations of the rights of Afrikaners. This stems from a new law in South Africa that allows land to be confiscated if it is not being used or if its redistribution is in the public interest.
South Africa argues that the law is aimed at "righting the wrongs" committed during apartheid, when land was confiscated from black people and they were forcibly relocated to certain areas.
In May, during a visit to Washington by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump accused the South African government of "genocide" against whites; Ramaphosa rejected the accusations, stating that if there had been genocide, there would have been no white ministers in his delegation.
The US president then refused to attend the G20 summit, which was held on 22-23 November in Johannesburg.