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As the relationship between the two countries continues to be strained, US President Donald Trump has announced he will prevent South Africa from attending the G20 summit in the coming year.

19 of the Group of 20 countries, plus the European Union, and the current African Union, make up the group. The group’s members meet throughout the year, but a country that holds its presidency also holds an annual summit.

Trump made the decision to abstain from the G20 summit that was being held last week in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has charged that the nation is staging a “white genocide” against white farmers and communities.

The US will host the G20 summit in 2015 as the group’s next leader.

Trump claimed in a post earlier this month that it was “total disgrace” that South Africa’s hosting of this year’s summit, the first to be held in an African country, was “total disgrace.”

Trump reiterates a claim that South Africa has condemned and for which there is no proof, saying that “Afrikaners are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated.”

As long as these human rights abuses continue, no US government official will be present. The 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida is a “dream come true” event I’m hosting. he continued.

Trump made the announcement on Wednesday that South Africa would not be invited to the upcoming G20 summit in another Truth Social post.

Trump’s statement: What and why?

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa ended the two-day summit last weekend without passing the gift, as customary, to the next nation taking the presidency.

In his closing remarks on Sunday, Ramaphosa said, “This summit officially closes this summit and moves on to the next president of the G20, which is the United States, where we will see each other again next year.”

He claimed Ramaphosa refused to hand the gift to the person despite Trump’s claim that he had sent one from the US embassy in South Africa at the last minute.

Trump also made repeated claims on Wednesday that the US did not travel to the summit because, in his view, the government of South Africa had refused to “acknowledge or address the horrific Human Rights abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers.”

They are killing white people and randomly allowing them to rob their farms, to put it more bluntly. Worse of all, he claimed, the New York Times and Fake News Media, which are about to go out of business, won’t say anything about this genocide.

South Africa “refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our US Embassy, who was present at the G20 Closing Ceremony.” Therefore, in my opinion, South Africa will not be invited to the 2026 G20, which will take place in Miami, Florida, the following year.

“We will stop all payments and subsidies to them immediately because South Africa has shown the world that it is not a country that deserves membership anywhere.” I appreciate you paying attention to this issue. the president enlarging.

After China, the US is South Africa’s second-largest single-country trading partner. According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, in total goods and services trade between the two nations reached $ 26.2% in 2024.

What has South Africa done to make a decision?

Trump’s choice was described as “regrettable” in a statement released by Ramaphosa’s office on Thursday.

“South Africa belongs to the G20 in its own right and name. All other G20 members are at their own risk.

South Africa is a sovereign, democratic, and constitutionally democratic nation that does not object to insults from other nations for its contribution to global platforms. South Africa will never disparage another nation or its standing within the global community.

President Trump continues to use punitive measures against South Africa based on false information and distortions about our country, regretting the statement’s conclusion.

The G20 is what?

Following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the group was established by 19 nations and the EU as a forum to discuss global economic issues.

Its other members include the African Union, which formally merged with Argentina at the 2023 summit in India, Brazil, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkiye, and the United Kingdom, as well as the African Union, which formally incorporated as a 21st member.

There are also frequently invited guests from other nations, with 42 of them this year. Karol Nawrocki, president of Poland, claimed Trump had already invited him to the meeting in September.

No member state has ever been denied access to the summit up until now.

However, former US President Joe Biden claimed that Russia should be expelled from the G20 because of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but that claim was never fulfilled.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, was escorted to an event instead, prompting Sergey Lavrov, his foreign minister, to show up. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has an arrest warrant for the war in Ukraine.

Maxim Oreshkin, the deputy head of the presidential administration, was present at this year’s meeting in Johannesburg. &nbsp,

Following its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Russia was expelled from the Group of Seven (G7), before becoming known as the G8.

Trump may impose a G20 member’s ban on the annual summit.

Officially speaking, not. There is no formal mechanism for a G20 member state to unilaterally outlaw another because it is a group of informal states and bodies.

Trump may still grant South African representatives US visas, which would entail a ban on them from the nation and, consequently, the summit.

Why does Trump assert that there is a “white genocide” in South Africa?

Trump has frequently made allegations that there are white farmers in South Africa who are being killed in what he refers to as “genocide” since taking office in January.

Trump has continued to defend his claims despite being refuted by both South African officials and Afrikaner organizations.

Since the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, unfounded rumors of a rumored “white genocide” have been spreading among minority, white communities. They have been popular in far-right circles in the US for ten years and have attracted the vocal backing of Elon Musk, a Trump ally and tech billionaire from South Africa.

Trump bases his assertions on the passage of a new law in South Africa that addresses land ownership disparities. More than 30 years after the end of apartheid, the white minority in the country still owns a third of the land, but South Africa claims the new law doesn’t discriminate against white landowners.

Experts believe that the Trump administration’s decision to cut foreign aid to South Africa in February could pose a serious threat to the country’s HIV response.

In response to the nation’s Expropriation Act, which allows for the seized and redistributed of land, he also signed the Executive Order “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.”

Trump blasted the alleged government actions that “promoted disproportionate violence against racial dissentioning landowners” and “equal opportunity in employment, education, and business” in the order.

In addition, Trump made an offer to resettle Afrikaners in the US, and in May, 59 white South Africans emigrated as part of a refugee program.

The ICJ’s decision to prosecute South Africa for its genocide of Gaza was also condemned in the order.

Ramaphosa disputed claims of a “white genocide” and said South Africa typically has high rates of violent crime, which affects all ethnic groups during a&nbsp, heated exchange with Trump at the White House in May.

At least 65 people have died in the deadliest and most devastation fire in the Chinese territory’s history, which is now being put out by firefighters in Hong Kong for a second day.

Officials reported on Thursday that fires were raging in the Tai Po neighborhood and that four buildings in the Wang Fuk Court housing complex had been extinguished.

However, rescuers are still frantically trying to rescue those who are feared trapped on the complex’s upper floors, where at least 279 people are missing.

Lawrence Lee, a resident, claimed to still not hear from his wife, who he believes is cooped up in their apartment.

“I told her to leave when the fire started,” she said on the phone. But once she left, the hallway and stairs were strewn with smoke and were dark, leaving her with the choice to return to the apartment,” he said.

The Hong Kong Fire Services Department estimates that there are 65 victims of the disaster, including one firefighter. The Hospital Authority claims that more than 70 people have been injured, many of whom have been burned and inhaled by smoke.

People in mainland China have been watching aghast as the tragedy unfolds, according to Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, who is a reporter from Beijing.

“I believe that many Chinese people have deep compassion and empathy for the affected.” According to Yu, hundreds of millions of them reside in dense urban areas, in high-rise structures like those that caught fire in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district.

Construction managers are being detained on suspicion of manslaughter.

On Wednesday, the fire started on bamboo scaffolding and construction netting and spread quickly to seven other buildings in the complex.

Authorities believed that some of the materials used to create the high-rise buildings’ exteriors did not meet fire resistance standards, which caused the fire to spread surprisingly quickly.

Additionally, according to police, they discovered styrofoam, which is extremely flammable, on the windows in one unaffected tower near the elevator lobby.

On suspicion of manslaughter, three construction workers who were in charge of the site’s maintenance have been detained. According to senior superintendent of police Eileen Chung, the men, who were company directors and an engineering consultant, were suspected of being “grossly negligent.”

Hong Kong’s CEO, John Lee, announced plans to phase out bamboo scaffolding in response to concerns about construction safety and said all housing estates that are undergoing significant improvements would be inspected right away.

The disaster, according to Alex Webb, a fire safety engineer at CSIRO Infrastructure Technologies in Australia, is “quite shocking” because building spacing is typically required to prevent fires from spreading from one building to another. According to Webb, “they don’t typically spread beyond the building of origin.”

Review fire safety with caution.

According to analysts, the government’s building and fire safety regulators could experience public outcry.

According to Chau Sze Kit, the chairman of the Hong Kong Construction Industry Employees General Union, “I think we need to seriously review fire safety and site safety management across the entire industry, including government oversight.”

Nearly 2, 000 apartments are housed in the housing complex, which includes many older people who may have had trouble evacuating quickly.

The anticorruption agency of Hong Kong said it would look into any potential corruption related to the 1980s renovation project that it had been carrying out.

Lee claimed that to assist residents, the government would establish a $300 million (US $ 38.6 million) fund.

Numerous Chinese businesses and organizations have pledged millions in cash to the fire victims, including Xiaomi, Xpeng, and Geely as well as the Jack Ma Foundation, an organization that supports Chinese charities.