US expels South African ambassador, declaring him 'persona non grata'
The Trump administration expelled South Africa's ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, according to a post on X from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday.
Rubio called Rasool a "race-baiting politician" who hates America and US President Donald Trump, after the ambassador's remarks at a seminar in South Africa. Rubio also declared Rasool "persona non grata" in his statement.
During the seminar in South Africa, Rasool characterised Trump and his MAGA movement as a supremacist "assault on the incumbency", referring to those in power and one that is not only mobilised at home but also abroad.
Rasool raised Elon Musk's involvement in the affairs of other countries like the UK, where he has voiced support for Nigel Farage and the Reform UK party, to the far-right AFD in Germany, as well as in South Africa, Musk's country of origin, where Musk has labelled white South Africans as an embattled community.
"And very clearly, it’s to project white victimhood as a dog whistle that there is a global protective movement that is beginning to envelop embattled white communities or apparently embattles white communities," Rasool said.
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Musk is a close confidante and senior advisor to President Trump and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The Trump administration has given Rasool 72 hours to leave the country, according to a diplomatic notice reported by CBS.
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa told journalists on Monday that his country seeks to improve relations with the US, which is South Africa's second-largest trading partner.
"We have noted the displeasure that has been expressed by the United States, particularly about the remarks he made," and said he asked Rasool to "give me a full report".
Rasool had only been on the job for two months but had previously served as South Africa's ambassador to the US from 2010-2015.
South Africa's case at ICJ
Relations between the US and South Africa have been tense since the African country filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel, accusing it of genocide in December 2023, and tensions have escalated further since Trump took office.
The former Apartheid state has also accused Israel of apartheid for its treatment of Palestinians.
South Africa's 84-page application at the ICJ called on the body to investigate whether Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians after it launched its bloody offensive on Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.
The application says Israel's actions are "genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group".
Israel has rejected the filing, calling it "blood libel" - a reference to antisemitic lies that originated in the Middle Ages that Jews murdered Christian boys to use their blood for religious rituals.
Since coming into office, Trump passed an executive order to freeze US assistance to South Africa, citing "unjust racial discrimination" against Afrikaaners - the white descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa - that colonised the country.
The order also cites South Africa's case at the ICJ as an aggression against the US and its allies.
"South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements."
The order went so far as to "promote the resettlement [to the US] of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation".
According to South Africa's 2022 census, white South Africans - which includes Afrikaaners - own over 72 percent of the country's individually owned farmland while making up just over seven percent of the country's population.
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