UPDATE | SA not invited to first meeting of G20

President Cyril Ramaphosa closing the G20 Leaders Summit in Johannesburg last month. The US omitted South Africa from the G20 Sherpa meeting invitations,signalling Donald Trump’s push to exclude Pretoria from the forum.

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Washington has sent invites to the first meeting of G20 Sherpas to all member nations except South Africa.The international relations ministry said excluding any nation would destabilise the forum.Member nations have promised to rally in support of South Africa.The United States has sent out invitations to G20 members for the first Sherpa meeting of its presidency of the forum but left out South Africa,according to the Department of International Relations.

The omission suggests that US President Donald Trump intends to make good on his threat to exclude South Africa from the world’s premier forum for macroeconomic cooperation while Washington holds the rotating presidency,which it assumed on Monday.

International relations spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said as a founding member,South Africa’s commitment to the G20’s principles and collaborative framework “remains steadfast”.

Phiri added that Pretoria was confident that all fellow member states believed that the G20 drew its legitimacy from this commitment and its full,current composition and recognised the risk of sidelining any member.

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“Any unilateral departure from this consensus would not only fragment our collective agenda but would inevitably set a precedent,introducing a new and destabilising variable into the calculus of membership for every nation present,” he told News24.

READ | US-SA showdown: Trump needs G20 members’ consensus to bar South Africa

It is reliably understood that the Sherpas will meet from 15 to 16 December.

Trump has twice in the past month threatened to tear up South Africa’s membership of the G20 – the second time after the leaders’ summit,where South Africa ignored his extraordinary warning not to adopt a declaration.

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The 30-page text was endorsed by all member nations,barring the United States,which boycotted the summit.

READ | It’s Trump’s movie now as G20 US pledges ‘reform’ of macroeconomic forum

In a post on his Truth Social platform four days later,Trump repeated his fiction of “horrific human rights abuses endured by Afrikaners” and claimed South Africa was not worthy of “membership anywhere”.

“Therefore,at my direction,South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20,which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami,Florida next year,” he wrote.

Responding to this on Sunday,President Cyril Ramaphosa said:

We must make it clear that South Africa is one of the founding members of the G20 and South Africa is therefore a member of the G20 in its own name and right.

“We will continue to participate as a full,active and constructive member of the G20.”

Diplomats said that hours earlier,at the final Sherpas’ meeting of South Africa’s presidency,other member nations had assured the country of their full support against any attempt by Washington to exclude it.

German Councillor Friedrich Merz has gone on record to say he would try to reason with Trump.

“In my view,the G7 and G20 are formats that should not be made smaller without good reason,” Merz said in Berlin last week.

“I will try to convince him (Trump) to invite the South African government as well.”

Diplomats on Tuesday told News24 that Poland had been given special G20 invitee status,meaning that Warsaw has not only been invited to the G20 leaders’ summit in Miami but invited to this month’s meeting of Sherpas.

US diplomatic sources could not immediately confirm the information.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with additional information.