South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday that the country will symbolically hand over the G20 presidency to an “empty chair” next week in the absence of U.S. participation, while emphasizing the importance of preserving trade relations with Washington.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced last week that no American officials would attend the November 22–23 G20 summit in South Africa
Trump Declares No U.S. Officials Will Attend G20 Summit In South Africa, claiming concerns over alleged “human rights abuses.” He referenced widely debunked claims that white South Africans are being “slaughtered” and forced off their land.
Trump has also stated that U.S. refugee admissions this year would prioritize Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers who make up much of South Africa’s white population.
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“I have said in the past, I don’t want to hand over to an empty chair, but the empty chair will be there, (I will) probably symbolically hand over to that empty chair and then talk to President Trump…,” Ramaphosa said while answering reporters’ questions in Soweto, where he was supervising clean-up efforts for the summit.
South African officials have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump’s repeated assertions that Afrikaners are victims of ethnic cleansing, insisting that no group in the Black-majority nation is discriminated against based on race, as seen on Reuters.
Ramaphosa stressed that protecting economic ties with the United States, one of South Africa’s major trading partners, remains essential. “We export products to that country that in the end don’t end up in the White House.
They end up in the hands of consumers in the United States,” he said. “There could well be a view that we should not engage with the United States. (But) sometimes you have to talk to people who may not be very friendly … to advance the interests of your own people.”
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Image Credit: Reuters
