South African president says ‘boycotts never really work’ despite BDS support

Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has officially endorsed the BDS campaign against Israel for years.

By Ailin Vilches Arguello, The Algemeiner

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that “boycott politics doesn’t work” following the Trump administration’s announced absence from a summit in his country later this month — despite his ruling party’s ongoing support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

On Wednesday, Ramaphosa urged US President Donald Trump to reconsider his decision to boycott the G20 Leaders’ Summit, scheduled for Nov. 22-23 in Johannesburg, northeastern South Africa.

Ramaphosa criticized Washington for “giving up the very important role that they should be playing as the biggest economy in the world” in its decision to skip the summit — the first to be held in Africa.

“It is unfortunate that the United States has decided not to attend the G20. All I can say in my experience in politics is that boycotts never really work. They have a very contradictory effect,” the South African leader told reporters outside parliament in Cape Town.

Trump, who has previously accused the South African government of human rights abuses against white minorities — including land seizures and killings — called the decision to host the G20 summit in the country a “total disgrace.”

“No US government official will attend [the summit] as long as these human rights abuses continue,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

However, the South African government has strongly rejected any claims of genocide, saying such accusations are “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence.”

Ramaphosa reaffirmed that the summit will proceed as scheduled, regardless of Washington’s absence.

“The G20 will go on. All other heads of state will be here, and in the end, we will take fundamental decisions. And their absence is their loss,” he said.

“The US needs to think again whether boycott politics actually works, because in my experience, it doesn’t work. It’s better to be inside the tent rather than being outside the tent,” he continued.

Despite such claims, Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has officially endorsed the BDS campaign against Israel for years.

The BDS movement seeks to isolate the Jewish state internationally as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the campaign have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.

In 2012, the ANC announced its full backing of the BDS movement, urging “all South Africans to support the programs and campaigns of the Palestinian civil society which seek to put pressure on Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution.”

Following Ramaphosa’s comments this week, it remains unclear why he continues to back anti-Israel boycotts if he believes they don’t work.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics, actively confronting the Jewish state on the international stage.

Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Hamas, hosting officials from the Palestinian terrorist group and expressing solidarity with their “cause.”

In one instance, Ramaphosa led a crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Since December 2023, South Africa has also been pursuing its case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.