US President Donald Trump welcomes South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2025. Ramaphosa meets Trump amid tensions over Washington's resettlement of white Afrikaners that the US president claims are the victims of "genocide." (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) 
President Cyril Ramaphosa says he will have a meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Group of Seven (G7) Summit in Canada at the weekend.
Speaking to reporters in Pretoria on Tuesday, Ramaphosa said he would also have separate meetings with the chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, and the prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney.
The G7 Summit will take place in Kananaskis, Canada, from 14 to 17 June. Canada, which holds the G7 presidency, invited Ramaphosa to the meeting.
Read more: SA is awaiting a US response to its trade proposal, says Ramaphosa’s spokesperson
The President told reporters that attending the G7 was a “great opportunity” from which Pretoria expected “good outcomes”.
“I’m hoping that when we meet the various other leaders of various countries who are part of the G7, we’ll be able to interact meaningfully with them.”
He said the G7 Summit gave Pretoria the opportunity to “propagate” its message about its G20 presidency and the “great outcomes” it wanted to see in November. The US will take over the presidency of the G20 from SA after the summit.
“We’re going to use it as a platform to begin to consolidate what we want to achieve in November when the leaders’ summit takes place here [in Johannesburg],” Ramaphosa told reporters.
— Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) June 10, 2025
Ramaphosa’s second meeting with Trump will take place three weeks after he met the US president in the White House on 21 May. The meeting followed months of worsening diplomatic ties between Washington and Pretoria, and false claims from Trump about a white “genocide” in South Africa.
Read more: Ramaphosa in resolve-and-reset mode on SA-US ties despite Trump’s white Afrikaner genocide claims
“Our visit to the White House was a moment where South Africa set out to reset the relationship with the United States, and I do believe that we have achieved that.
“Many people were very critical of our going there, and some were even saying we were going cap in hand and what-have-you — we were not. Some were even suggesting that we were summoned. We were not summoned. In my telephone conversation with President Trump two weeks earlier, I said, ‘I want to come and see you’, and he immediately conceded to that and later gave us a date. So that is not summoning. It is us taking the initiative that we want to go and see him,” said Ramaphosa.
He stressed that SA did not “go kowtowing” to the White House, but went with the aims of resetting US-SA relations and beginning “serious engagement” with the US, particularly regarding trade and its participation in SA’s G20 processes.
While in the US, Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau had proposed a wide-ranging trade deal to his counterpart, the US trade representative, spanning areas including gas, agriculture, automotive and minerals. Ramaphosa’s spokesperson last week said that SA was awaiting a response to this proposal.
“Right now, there is engagement that is taking place between the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition and the Department of International Relations, so we’ve opened the way for us to engage seriously with the United States,” Ramaphosa told reporters. He added that the discussions on trade matters were “now under way”.
Read more: Ambush or relationship reset? Daily Maverick writers assess Ramaphosa’s meeting with Trump
In his three-hour working visit with Trump, Ramaphosa had made the point that the US had been at the forefront of creating the G20, and so it would be important for Trump to be present when Ramaphosa handed over the G20 presidency to the US in November this year.
“Of course, the other [reason to go to the US] was to demonstrate the importance of President Trump coming to South Africa for the G20, and he immediately conceded that, yes, the G20 without the United States — who originated the G20 process — is not so effective as it is with the G7. He’s going to the G7; I expect him to come to the G20 here.
“For us, it’s important for us as a nation to reposition ourselves in the very turbulent geopolitical architecture or situation that we have, and that is why it was important to go to the United States,” he said. DM