The Trump administration has used the accreditation process to lock South Africa, a founding G20 member, out of the forum for the entirety of 2026 ©provided by Business Insider Africa© Business Insider Africa
South Africa’s Finance Minister landed in Washington this week for global economic talks, but he won’t be sitting at the G20 table. He wasn’t invited.
・The US has refused to accredit South Africa’s delegation to G20 meetings in Washington, sidelining Africa’s only full G20 member for the entire year.
・Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana confirmed the news to Bloomberg while en route to Washington for IMF and World Bank talks.
・The move is the culmination of over a year of deliberate diplomatic punishment by the Trump administration, rooted in debunked claims about white Afrikaners.
・South Africa says it will sit out 2026 and re-engage when the UK takes over the G20 presidency next year.
Enoch Godongwana is in the US capital for the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings running April 13 to 18, the kind of high-level forum where the world’s finance ministers and central bankers map out responses to global economic pressures.
The G20 finance chiefs meeting runs alongside it, as it traditionally does. South Africa will not be part of it.
In an interview with Bloomberg at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Sunday, while in transit to Washington, Godongwana confirmed that the US had refused to accredit his delegation, and that of South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago, for the G20 meetings.
The decision makes South Africa, Africa’s only full G20 member and one of the group’s founding nations, a spectator at a forum it helped build.
“We are members of the G20,” Godongwana said. “However, the US has not accredited us, which means that South Africa will not be part of the G20 for the whole of this year.”
His framing was deliberate. This, he insisted, is not an expulsion. It is a lock-out, and there is a difference.
A G20 host nation controls access to its meetings through the accreditation process. It is an administrative tool, not a legal one. South Africa’s membership has not been revoked. Its seat simply has a padlock on it for as long as the US holds the presidency.
“We’ve taken a view that for us it is a holiday from the G20 this year,” he said. “We’re beginning in November with the UK presidency.”