{"id":855111,"date":"2026-03-27T08:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T06:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=855111"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:34:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T06:34:00","slug":"ramaphosa-makes-a-sudden-u-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/855111\/ramaphosa-makes-a-sudden-u-turn\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramaphosa makes a sudden U-turn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South Africa walked back <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/855060\/united-states-deals-another-blow-to-south-africa\/\"><strong>its claim that US pressure<\/strong><\/a> led to its disinvitation from an upcoming Group of Seven summit in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pretoria\u2019s presidency spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, had said on Thursday afternoon that an invitation to attend the meeting scheduled to take place from 15 to 17 June had been withdrawn because of \u201csustained pressure\u201d from Washington. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hours later, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country hadn\u2019t been snubbed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy information is that there has been no pressure from any country, the US or any other country,\u201d Ramaphosa said in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/eNCAnews\/videos\/cyril-ramaphosa-says-there-has-been-no-sustained-pressure-from-the-united-states\/1591244078761630\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">remarks<\/a>\u00a0aired by Johannesburg-based broadcaster eNCA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe haven\u2019t attended every G-7, so if we don\u2019t go to this one, it should never be a surprise to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Magwenya didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment sent by text message on Friday morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The US State Department said it hadn\u2019t requested that South Africa be shut out of the G-7 meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have not asked the French to exclude South Africa from the G7 summit,\u201d Nick Checker, who heads the State Department\u2019s Bureau for African Affairs, said in an emailed response to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The South African presidency\u2019s initial statement suggested a new flashpoint in already strained ties with the US. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Relations have deteriorated sharply since Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House last year, with the US president falsely accusing Pretoria of subjecting White farmers to a genocide and seizing their land, denouncing its relations with Iran, and rejecting its Black economic-empowerment policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last year, Trump boycotted a G-20 summit that Ramaphosa hosted in Johannesburg, and said South African officials won\u2019t be invited to attend this year\u2019s meeting in Miami.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Kenya, rather than South Africa, had been invited to the G-7 meeting. Kenya and France are scheduled to co-host the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi on 11 to 12 May.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe did not give in to any pressure,\u201d Barrot was quoted as saying by Agence-France Presse. \u201cWe made a choice consistent with our decision to hold a streamlined G7 focused on geo-economic issues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa has walked back its claim that US pressure led to its disinvitation from an upcoming Group of Seven summit in France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":848397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":855114,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855111\/revisions\/855114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}