South Africa has said the decision of the United States to expel Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool is “regrettable”, but the country “remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship” with Washington.
South Africa’s presidency urged “all relevant and impacted stakeholders to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter” in a statement issued on Saturday morning, just hours after US State Secretary Marco Rubio called Rasool a “race-baiting politician” who hates the US and President Donald Trump.
Rubio wrote on X that Rasool was “no longer welcome in our great country”, adding: “We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”
Rubio linked his remarks to an article by the right-wing media outlet Breitbart, wherein Rasool is quoted as saying Trump mobilised a “supremacist instinct” and “white victimhood” as a “dog whistle” during the 2024 elections.
But South African political analyst Sandile Swana told Al Jazeera that the “core of the dispute” was Pretoria’s decision to form a genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Israel, a close US ally, over its war on Gaza.
In February, Rasool, an anti-apartheid campaigner, told the Zeteo news site that what South Africans experienced during apartheid rule “is on steroids in Palestine”.
Moreover, Swana explained that in the fight against apartheid, the US “supported the apartheid regime”.
“[So] Rasool continues to point out the behaviour of the United States, even now is to support apartheid and genocide,” he added.
Land policy
Still, the decision by Washington to expel the South African ambassador comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries, since Trump cut financial aid to South Africa after citing his disapproval of its land policy that he alleged allows land to be seized from white farmers.
Last week, Trump pushed this further and said South Africa’s farmers were welcome to settle in the US, repeating that the South African government was “confiscating” land from white people.
South African-born tech billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, has also accused the country of having “openly racist ownership laws”.
However, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has defended the policy, saying the government was not confiscating land but aiming to level racial disparities in land ownership in the Black-majority nation.
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