U.S. President Donald Trump says that his authorities will boycott the Group of 20 summit this month in South Africa over his claims {that a} white minority group there may be being violently persecuted. These claims have been extensively rejected.
Trump introduced Friday on social media that no U.S. authorities official will attend the Nov. 22-23 summit in Johannesburg “as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.” South Africa’s Black-led authorities has been a daily goal for Trump since he returned to workplace.
In February, Trump issued an govt order stopping U.S. monetary help to South Africa, citing its remedy of the Afrikaner white minority. His administration has additionally prioritized Afrikaners for refugee standing within the U.S. and says they are going to be given a lot of the 7,500 locations out there this fiscal 12 months.
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The South African authorities — and a few Afrikaners themselves — say Trump’s claims of persecution are baseless.
Descendants of European settlers
Afrikaners are South Africans who’re descended primarily from Dutch but additionally French and German colonial settlers who first got here to the nation within the seventeenth century.
Afrikaners have been on the coronary heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-1994, resulting in many years of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. However Afrikaners will not be a homogenous group, and a few fought towards apartheid. There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s inhabitants of 62 million.
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Afrikaners are divided over Trump’s claims. Some say they face discrimination, however a bunch of main Afrikaner enterprise figures and lecturers stated in an open letter final month that “the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa” is deceptive.
Afrikaners’ Dutch-derived language is extensively spoken in South Africa and is likely one of the nation’s 12 official languages. Afrikaners are represented in each facet of society. Afrikaners are a few of South Africa’s richest entrepreneurs and a few of its most profitable sports activities stars, and in addition serve in authorities. Most are largely dedicated to South Africa’s multiracial democracy.
Trump claims they’re being ‘killed and slaughtered’
Trump asserted that Afrikaners “are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.” The president’s feedback are in reference to a comparatively small variety of assaults on Afrikaner farmers that he and others declare are racially motivated.
Afrikaner refugees from South Africa arrive on Might 12 at Dulles Worldwide Airport in Dulles, Va.
Trump has additionally pointed to a extremely contentious legislation launched by the South African authorities that permits land to be appropriated from personal homeowners with out compensation. Some Afrikaners concern that legislation is aimed toward eradicating them from their land in favor of South Africa’s poor Black majority. Many South Africans, together with opposition events, have criticized the legislation, but it surely hasn’t led to land confiscations.
South Africa rejects the claims
The South African authorities stated in response to Trump’s social media put up that his claims have been “not substantiated by fact.” It has stated that Trump’s criticism of South Africa over Afrikaners is a results of misinformation as a result of it misses the context that Black farmers and farmworkers are additionally killed in rural assaults, which make up a tiny proportion of the nation’s excessive violent crime charge.
There have been greater than 26,000 homicides in South Africa in 2024. Of these, 37 have been farm murders, based on an Afrikaner foyer group that tracks them. Consultants on rural assaults in South Africa have stated the overriding motive for the violent farm invasions is theft and never race.
Different stress on South Africa
Trump stated it’s a “total disgrace” that the G20 summit — a gathering of the leaders of the 19 high wealthy and growing economies, the European Union and the African Union — is being held in South Africa. He had already stated he would not attend, and Vice President JD Vance was because of go in his place. The U.S. will tackle the rotating presidency of the G20 after South Africa.
Trump additionally stated in a speech final week that South Africa needs to be thrown out of the G20.
Trump’s criticism of Africa’s most developed financial system has gone past the problem of Afrikaners. His govt order in February stated South Africa had taken “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies,” particularly with its choice to accuse Israel of genocide towards Palestinians in Gaza on the United Nations’ high court docket.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G20 international ministers assembly in South Africa in February after deriding the host nation’s G20 slogan of “solidarity, equality and sustainability” as “DEI and climate change.”
