Enoch Godongwana, South Africa’s finance minister, slammed claims of a genocide against white Afrikaners in the country Wednesday, after President Donald Trump last week announced no U.S. officials would attend the upcoming Johannesburg G20 summit as long as “human rights abuses continue.”

“We convene at a time when South Africa, like many nations around the world, is grappling with intensifying global competition and mounting economic and political divisions,” Godongwana said in a budget statement. To South African leaders, “it is against this fractured landscape that South Africa has been falsely accused of genocide against its white community and threatened with punitive sanctions based on these falsehoods.”

The White House has long fixated on what it says is South Africa’s mistreatment of white farmers. The administration granted refugee status to Afrikaners in May, even as it clamped down on refugee admissions from other countries. Also in May, Trump surprised South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a White House visit by showing him videos and images he said were evidence of persecution.....

The South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation last week called Trump’s post “regrettable” and said his claims were “not substantiated by fact.”

“Let me thank the many communities here at home and around the world that have rejected the false narratives and the fear, hate and disinformation they represent, and instead chosen to defend the principles of solidarity and equality,” Godongwana said Tuesday.