U.S. to boycott next G20 meeting in South Africa

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not attend an upcoming G20 meeting in South Africa, he said on Wednesday, days after President Donald Trump threatened to cut off funding to the African country.

South Africa is hosting a meeting of foreign ministers of the G20 group of countries from Feb. 20-21 in Johannesburg. The country holds the G20 presidency until November.

Trump said on Sunday, without citing evidence, that “South Africa is confiscating land” and “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly.” 

South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who is close to Trump, also accused South Africa in recent days of having “openly racist ownership laws,” suggesting white people were the victims.

President Cyril Ramaphosa defended South Africa’s land policy after Trump’s threat, saying the government had not confiscated any land and the policy was aimed at ensuring equitable public access to land.

Farm land ownership contentious

The question of land ownership is highly politically charged in South Africa due to the legacy of the colonial and apartheid eras when Black people were dispossessed of their lands and denied property rights.

White landowners still possess three-quarters of South Africa’s freehold farmland, with four per cent owned by Black citizens. About 80 per cent of the country’s population is Black, compared to about eight per cent that is white, according to the latest land audit, from 2017.

Partly in an effort to redress this imbalance, Ramaphosa signed a law last month allowing the state to expropriate land “in the public interest.”

“South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote solidarity, equality and sustainability. In other words: DEI and climate change,” Rubio said in his post on X, without giving details.

South Africa’s foreign ministry said in response to Rubio’s post that “there is no arbitrary dispossession of land [or] private property. This law is similar to the eminent domain laws.”

The Trump administration has attempted to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the U.S. government. Rights groups say DEI programs help deal with inequities faced by marginalized groups. Trump calls DEI anti-merit.

As well, South Africa requires foreign companies to provide 30 per cent equity to historically disadvantaged groups if they want to operate in the country. Musk’s Starlink satellite service has thus far been denied a licence to operate in South Africa amid protracted negotiations.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy criticizes Musk:

Musk has been designated a “special government employee” in the U.S. by the Trump administration, despite apparent conflicts of interest given his status as CEO of several companies subject to federal regulation, including Tesla, SpaceX and X.

For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated whether Musk broke securities laws in 2022 when he bought stock in Twitter, as well as statements he made on social media regarding his brain-chip startup Neuralink, which some alleged were misleading.

Nevertheless, Musk and a team operating as the Department of Government Efficiency — which despite its name is not a formal executive federal department — have gained access to program information, with Musk assailing the foreign aid spending of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Concerns about public health if funding stops 

Freezes on U.S. foreign aid spending since Trump took office on Jan. 20 have caught charity groups and governments around the world flatfooted.

South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told parliament there on Wednesday that officials scrambled to meet with U.S. embassy staff for information after receiving no warning the Trump administration it would freeze crucial funding for the world’s biggest national HIV/AIDS program.  South Africa has the world’s highest number of people living with HIV, at around eight million, and the United States funds around 17 per cent of its program through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched by George W. Bush’s administration.

Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Thursday the organization was going to reach out to Rubio to raise concerns about the impact of an aid freeze on patients with diseases like HIV and the risk of an mpox pandemic in the Congo, he told Reuters.

“When I got the information about the pause … I was alarmed,” Kaseya said. “How can we respond to all of the ongoing outbreaks if we don’t have funding?”

Rubio also said in his post that he did not want to coddle “anti-Americanism,” but did not elaborate.

The U.S. under Joe Biden criticized South Africa after it initiated a case in December 2023 with the International Court of Justice accusing close American ally Israel of genocide in its operations in Gaza, which was launched two months earlier after Hamas-led militants from the territory killed nearly 1,200 people in southern Israel attacks.

South Africa’s governing African National Congress party has long compared the policies of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule. 

The origins of G20, an outgrowth of the Group of Seven intergovernmental forum, which Canada is a part of, date to 1999.

The first G20 in which heads of state took part en masse was in Washington in 2008, weeks after the global financial crisis roiled markets. Toronto was the host city of the fourth summit, in 2010.

While boycotts have been threatened in the past, the lack of U.S. participation would represent a major change.

In 2022, U.S. treasury secretary at the time, Janet Yellen, Canada’s then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland and some others walked out of a G20 meeting in Washington to protest the participation of Russia, which had just launched its invasion of Ukraine.