By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The United States has ordered South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, to leave the country, branding him a “race-baiting politician”.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in a post on X, accused Rasool of hating the US and President Donald Trump, saying the ambassador was “no longer welcome in our great country”.
Relations between the US and South Africa have deteriorated since Trump assumed office in January as US President, with his ally and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, appointed to head DOGE.
The expulsion of the ambassador is the latest in the brewing tension between both countries.
The South African presidency on Saturday described the decision as “regrettable”, adding that the country remained committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the US.
Rubio, in the post on Friday, linked to an article from the right-wing outlet Breitbart, quoted some of Rasool’s recent remarks made during an online lecture about the Trump administration.
At the event, the South African ambassador to the US said Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US.
“We see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA, in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white,” he said.
He suggested that South Africa was under attack because “we are the historical antidote to supremacism”.
In response, Rubio called Rasool “PERSONA NON GRATA”, referencing the Latin phrase for “unwelcome person”.
In early February, Trump signed an executive order freezing US financial assistance to South Africa, accusing Pretoria of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners, who largely descended from Dutch settlers historically believed to have first arrived in the 17th century.
“As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent, disfavoured minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” a statement from the White House said at the time.
It condemned a land administration law enacted by South Africa, the Expropriation Act, which it claims targets the white minority by allowing the government to take away their private land, an allegation Pretoria denies.
After the freezing of financial aid, South Africa’s government said the US President’s actions were based on “a campaign of misinformation and propaganda aimed at misrepresenting our great nation”. Despite being a minority, whites hold the majority of land ownership in South Africa, dating back to the apartheid era.
A fact sheet from the White House states the country “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority descendants of settler groups”.
Rasool, who previously served as US ambassador from 2010 to 2015, was himself forcibly removed from his home in Cape Town’s District Six as a child after it was declared a white area under the apartheid government.
He would later describe the eviction as a significant moment in his upbringing, which guided his future.
