US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio has announced that he will not attend the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In a statement on Thursday morning, Rubio said this is because of the ‘bad things’ South Africa is doing.
He said they include forcefully taking private property from people and promoting diversity and inclusion programmes.
He added this also includes climate change initiatives.
“I will not attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg. South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote “solidarity, equality, and sustainability.” In other words: DEI and climate change,” Rubio said.
The Secretary of State insisted that his job is to push the America first agenda and he will not waste taxpayers’ funds on matters that don’t align with their agenda.
“My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism,” he said.
The Group of 20 (G20) is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 sovereign countries, the European Union, and the African Union.
This comes just days after US President Donald Trump announced that he would cut all future funding to South Africa over allegations that it was confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly.
“South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people very badly. It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention. A massive Human Rights violation, at a minimum, is happening for all to see," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“The United States won’t stand for it, we will act. Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed."
He later told journalists, that South Africa's "leadership is doing some terrible things, horrible things".
"So that's under investigation right now. We'll decide, and until we find out what South Africa is doing — they're taking away land and confiscating land, and they're doing things that are perhaps far worse than that."
Last month, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill that allows land seizures without compensation in certain circumstances.
Land ownership has long been a contentious issue in South Africa with most farmland still owned by white people, 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid.
