South Africa’s Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana, has firmly dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s assertions that White Afrikaners are facing genocide in the country, describing the claims as baseless and misleading.
“South Africa has been falsely accused of genocide against its white community and threatened with punitive sanctions based on falsehood,” Godongwana said on Wednesday while presenting the medium-term budget policy statement.
His remarks come days after Trump announced that the United States would boycott the upcoming G20 summit scheduled to take place in Johannesburg.
The US president made the declaration in a social media post, repeating widely discredited allegations that members of the minority Afrikaner community are being targeted, persecuted, and dispossessed of land because of their race.
Trump has for months criticized South Africa’s coalition government over various issues—including Pretoria’s contentious decision to file a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the war in Gaza.
Godongwana accused Washington of amplifying misinformation and stoking fear, and commended Afrikaner groups who publicly rejected Trump’s remarks as divisive and unpatriotic.
Both the South African government and numerous civil society and Afrikaner organisations have repeatedly dismissed the claims as unfounded.
South Africa is set to host the G20 Summit on November 22–23.
