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The United States said on Friday that the South African ambassador to the country was “no longer welcome”.
Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool is a “race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS [president of the United States]”, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media.
“South Africa’s ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” he said. “We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered persona non grata.”
The persona non grata status essentially expels Rasool.
This came amid tensions between the Donald Trump administration and South Africa. In February, Washington suspended aid to South Africa, citing a South African law that Trump alleges allows land of white farmers to be seized.
On March 7, Trump repeated his allegations that Pretoria was “confiscating” land from white persons and said that South African farmers would be provided a “rapid pathway to citizenship” in the US.
It is unusual for the United States to expel an ambassador. It is the lower-ranking diplomats who are more frequently given the persona non grata status.
Rasool previously served as the South African ambassador to the US between 2010 to 2015 and returned to the post in January.
Rubio and the Trump administration did not explain what had triggered the decision against Rasool on Friday.
However, in his social media post, the secretary of state shared an article by news outlet Breitbart about comments Rasool had allegedly made about Trump and a “white supremacist movement” during a think tank’s webinar on Friday.
Rasool also pointed to the outreach by billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump ally, to far-right leaders in Europe, calling it a “dog whistle” in a global movement trying to rally people who see themselves as part of an “embattled white community”, the Associated Press reported.
Musk, who grew up in South Africa, has accused South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa government of having “openly racist ownership laws”. Ramaphosa has rejected the allegations.
Land ownership is a contentious matter in South Africa. A significant portion of private farmland is still owned by white families more than three decades after the end of apartheid. Pretoria is under pressure to implement reforms.
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