South African President backtracks on US role in G-7 summit snub
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The US State Department said it hadn’t requested that South Africa be shut out of the G-7 meeting.
PHOTO: AFP
PRETORIA – South Africa walked back its claim that US pressure led to its disinvitation from an upcoming Group of Seven summit in France.
Pretoria’s presidency spokesman, Mr Vincent Magwenya, had said on the afternoon of March 26 that an invitation to attend the meeting scheduled to take place from June 15-17 had been withdrawn because of “sustained pressure” from Washington.
Hours later, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country hadn’t been snubbed.
“My information is that there has been no pressure from any country, the US or any other country,” Mr Ramaphosa said in remarks aired by Johannesburg-based broadcaster eNCA.
“We haven’t attended every G-7, so if we don’t go to this one, it should never be a surprise to anyone.”
Mr Magwenya didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent by text message on the morning of March 27.
The US State Department said it hadn’t requested that South Africa be shut out of the G-7 meeting.
“We have not asked the French to exclude South Africa from the G-7 summit,” Mr Nick Checker, who heads the State Department’s Bureau for African Affairs, said in an e-mailed response to a request for comment.
The South African presidency’s initial statement suggested a new flashpoint in already strained ties with the US.
Relations have deteriorated sharply since Mr Donald Trump’s return to the White House last year, with the US president falsely accusing Pretoria of subjecting White farmers to a genocide and seizing their land, denouncing its relations with Iran, and rejecting its Black economic-empowerment policies.
Mr Trump boycotted a G-20 summit in 2025 that Mr Ramaphosa hosted in Johannesburg, and said South African officials won’t be invited to attend 2026’s meeting in Miami.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Kenya, rather than South Africa, had been invited to the G-7 meeting.
Kenya and France are scheduled to co-host the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi on May 11-12.
“We did not give in to any pressure,” Mr Barrot was quoted as saying by Agence-France Presse. “We made a choice consistent with our decision to hold a streamlined G-7 focused on geo-economic issues.” BLOOMBERG
