United States President Donald Trump has delivered an unprecedented diplomatic rebuke by formally excluding South Africa from the 2026 G20 Summit in Miami, Florida, and simultaneously directing an immediate freeze on all US payments, subsidies, and aid to the country. The punitive measures follow Trump’s claim that South African authorities deliberately humiliated a senior American representative by refusing to transfer G20 hosting responsibilities to the US Embassy at the conclusion of this year’s summit in Johannesburg.

The Indian National Congress responded within hours, with general secretary Jairam Ramesh issuing a stinging challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking whether the leader who routinely proclaims himself the foremost champion of Africa and the Global South will now confront his “good friend” Donald Trump and demand the reversal of a decision that strikes at the heart of multilateral fairness.

Ramesh pointed out that South Africa has been an integral G20 member since the forum’s establishment in 1999 as the continent’s largest economy by nominal GDP, attending every single leaders’ summit, including the very first one chaired by President George W. Bush in Washington DC in 2008. Its presence, he stressed, is a right earned through economic stature and consistent contribution, not a privilege granted or revocable by any single power, rendering Trump’s unilateral expulsion a dangerous precedent.

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The Congress leader evoked the unbreakable historical bond between the two nations: co-founders of the original BRICS grouping, partners in the IBSA trilateral forum and the BASIC climate coalition, decades of Indian leadership in the international struggle against apartheid, Mahatma Gandhi’s transformative two decades in South Africa that shaped his philosophy of non-violence, and the near-sacred reverence with which Indians regard Nelson Mandela.

As South Africa stands isolated by the world’s most powerful nation from a forum it helped create, Ramesh posed the decisive question: will Prime Minister Modi, who never misses an opportunity to position India as the natural leader of the Global South, finally use his much-vaunted personal chemistry with President Trump to ensure that Pretoria is restored to its rightful seat at the 2026 Miami summit?

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