Fundamental decisions will be made at the gathering even if the US is absent, President Cyril Ramaphosa has said
Washington’s decision to boycott the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg is “their loss,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said, making clear that it will hurt the US more than the summit itself, which he says will proceed.
US President Donald Trump announced last week that no official from his administration would attend the meeting of leaders from the world’s largest economies from November 22 to 23. He cited claims that Afrikaners, a white minority group and descendants of Dutch settlers who dominated during the apartheid era, are being “killed and slaughtered,” and their land “illegally confiscated” in South Africa.
Ramaphosa has repeatedly rejected Trump’s allegations as misinformation and met with the US leader in Washington in May in an attempt to defuse tensions.
Addressing reporters outside parliament in Cape Town on Wednesday, Ramaphosa called the Trump administration’s decision “unfortunate.” “The G20 will go on, all other heads of state will be here. In the end we will take fundamental decisions and their absence is their loss,” he told reporters, according to AP.
Ramaphosa said that “boycott politics” have never really worked in his experience. He criticized the US for abandoning the “very important role” that it “should be playing as the biggest economy in the world,” the agency quoted him as saying.
Speaking at the American Business Forum in Miami last week, Trump argued that South Africa “shouldn’t even be” a member of the G20 and that it is a “total disgrace” that it is hosting the summit.
South Africa assumed the rotating presidency of the G20 in December, becoming the first African nation to lead the forum. It will host the gathering under the theme “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability.” The US is due to take over the chairmanship next.
Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in South Africa, accusing Pretoria of promoting an “anti-American” agenda. Trump’s absence will mark the first time a US leader has skipped a G20 summit since the forum began meeting at head-of-state level in 2008.
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