By Bongiwe Dlamini

MBABANE:South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has described as “regrettable" the announcement by US President Donald Trump that South Africa would not be invited to take part in next year’s G20 summit in Florida, the British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) reported this week.

In a social media post, Trump said South Africa had refused to hand over the G20 presidency to a US Embassy representative at last week’s summit in Johannesburg.

”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,” said the United States President.

Members of the G20, a gathering of the world’s biggest economies do not need an invite but can possibly be barred through visa restrictions.

South Africa’s presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya said they "should by now accept” at the highest level of political leadership that “there won’t be a reset of the relationship" between the two countries despite the efforts they had undertaken.

“If visas are denied, well, then we will have to move on and look beyond the G20 in the US," he told the BBC, in response to a question on how they would proceed.

Ramaphosa said South Africa was focusing on working with other G20 members to carry the momentum of the issues deliberated at the summit in Johannesburg.

But Trump boycotted the Summit because of a widely discredited claim that South Africa's white minority is the victim of large-scale killings and land grabs.

Ramaphosa said in a statement that the US had been expected to participate in the G20 meetings, “but unfortunately, it elected not to attend the G20 Leaders Summit in Johannesburg out of its own volition". He however noted that some US businesses and civil society entities were present.