Caving to pressure from the US, France has rescinded its invitation to South Africa for the Group of Seven (G7) summit to be held in the French town of Evian in June.
French President Emmanuel Macron had personally invited South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa to attend the G7 meeting during the G20 summit hosted by South Africa in November 2025, which the US had boycotted.
“We’ve learnt that due to sustained pressure, France has had to withdraw its invitation to South Africa to attend the G7 meeting,” Vincent Magwenya, spokesperson of Ramaphosa, told AFP on March 26. “We are told that the Americans threatened to boycott the G7 if South Africa was invited.”
Consisting of the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, the G7 often invites other countries to attend its summit to broaden its narrow scope.
At last year’s G7 hosted by Canada, South Africa was invited, along with India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Ukraine, and South Korea. Similarly, France, which is hosting the summit this year, had invited South Africa, along with India, Brazil, and South Korea.
However, arm-twisted by Donald Trump, Macron’s government has disinvited South Africa. The US has been maneuvering diplomatically against South Africa ever since it took US-ally, Israel, to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in late December 2023 for its genocide in Gaza.
Pre-Trump diplomatic tensions
Just over a month later, the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act, introduced in the US House of Representatives, complained: “In contrast to its stated stance of nonalignment, the South African Government has a history of siding with malign actors, including Hamas, a US designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and a proxy of the Iranian regime, and continues to pursue closer ties with the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’) and the Russian Federation.”
Relations between the two countries had thus already begun to sour under the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
US hostility under Trump
With Donald Trump taking the presidency for a second term in January 2025, the US has turned actively hostile toward South Africa.
While continuing to fund Israel’s genocide, Trump has peddled the thoroughly discredited conspiracy theory of a genocide against the White population in South Africa.
Even a largely symbolic policy enacted by the South African government to correct the inequalities engineered by the former apartheid state provoked Trump, who has described it as discrimination against the White population.
US expelled South Africa’s ambassador
In March 2025, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the then South African ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, of being “a race-baiting politician who hates America” for making academic observations about the White supremacist character of the so-called “MAGA movement” at a webinar hosted by a South African think tank. He went on to announce in an X post that Rasool has been declared “persona non grata”.
On his return after his expulsion, Rasool was given a hero’s welcome at the airport by the left and the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
Read more: “I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity”, said South African ambassador expelled by the US
Less than half a month later, the US imposed a 30% tariff on most South African exports – the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the US Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s tariffs this February, in the interregnum, there were grave economic concerns, necessitating negotiations for a deal.
No appetite for capitulation
Nevertheless, even in this period, there was little appetite within South Africa to accept the state’s capitulation of its sovereignty to the US. It has not appointed a new ambassador after Rasool’s expulsion. Thabo Thage, the chargé d’affaires, has been heading the diplomatic mission in a downgraded capacity.
It is amid these strained diplomatic relations that Trump has forced France to disinvite South Africa. In its place, France has invited Kenya, whose President William Ruto is often criticized domestically for his subservience to the interests of US and its western partners.
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