South Africa's Ambassador to U.S. 'Persona Non Grata' - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Washington National Cathedral

Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool speaking at the Nelson Mandela memorial service in Washington, D.C. (file photo).

15 March 2025

allAfrica.com

By Juanita Williams

Cape Town — The Trump administration is expelling South Africa's Ambassador to the U.S. Ebrahim Rasool after statements he reportedly made during a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote that Rasool is "no longer welcome in our great country".

"Emrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA," Rubio wrote on X.

Rasool was speaking at a webinar for the independent think tank Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg about the U.S. government's foreign policy responses to South Africa's land expropriation legislation and its support of the Palestinian people. He had previously said he plans to tone down speaking on Gaza so as not to affect South Africa's inclusion in AGOA.

Rasool, on his second posting as ambassador after four years from 2011 to 2015, reportedly said: "What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency, at home, and — I think I've illustrated — abroad as well. So in terms of that, the supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again 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. And that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon. And so that needs to be factored in, so that we understand some of the things that we think are instinctive, nativist, racist things, I think that there's data that, for example, would support that, that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement, et cetera et cetera."

He then said the head of U.S. Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk's involvement in "an export of the revolution". Musk was born in South Africa.

"It's no accident that Elon Musk has involved himself in UK politics, and elevated a Nigel Farage and the Reform movement, in much the same way that he was instructed that on his way to the Munich security summit, Vice President Vance addressed the Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] to strengthen them in their election campaign. And that, then, begins to say, what then was the role of Afrikaners in that whole makeup. 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. It may not be true, it may not make sense, but that is not the dog whistle that is being heard in a global, white base. So I think we need to understand all of that. Another discontinuity — it's almost that they are pitting a supremacist insurgency against the incumbency," Rasool reportedly said during the webinar.

Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and South Africa have deteriorated since Trump took office.

The US president signed an executive order in February that freezes aid to the country, citing "egregious actions" by South Africa and cites "unjust racial discrimination" against white Afrikaners, and references the Land Expropriation Act.

Rasool's family was one of hundreds forcibly removed from their homes during the apartheid regime. He later became involved in the struggle for freedom, and was detained without trial for 16 months and banned and restricted for 18 months from 1985 to 1988.