The crowds that welcomed former n Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool in Cape Town after his expulsion from the were so large that he needed a police escort. And Rasool seemed glad to be home.
“A declaration of persona non grata (a diplomat who is unwelcome and unaccepted) is meant to humiliate you. But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity,” he said.
But despite the defiance and unconventional circumstances that led to , there is no getting around the fact that this is a new low point between Pretoria and Washington. The US rarely expels ambassadors, even from countries deemed unfriendly, and certainly not from nations with which it has strong trade relations.
“That the relationship between these countries has broken down is an open secret,” political analyst Ntsikelelo Breakfast, from the Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, told DW.
US President had already issued an executive order in February . Trump’s administration accuses South Africa of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran. Additionally, South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel before the which has irked the US, a firm ally of Israel and its biggest arms supplier.
Without providing evidence, Trump also accuses South Africa of pursuing anti-white policies after passing a bill that allows the state to expropriate land without compensation if it is deemed in the public interest. He also welcomed white farmers to resettle in the US. Nearly 70,000 White South Africans have since shown interest in relocating to the US.
Who is Rasool and why did the US expel him?
Rasool is widely considered an experienced diplomat and politician, having served as premier of the Western Cape. He also previously held important positions within the ruling ANC. Before that, he gained prominence as an anti-apartheid activist, for which he served prison sentences. He served as ambassador to the US before, between 2010 and 2015, when Barack Obama was president. Diplomatic sources said Rasool was appointed ambassador again in 2024 because of his experience in dealing with Washington.
Rasool has been a vocal critic of Israel, calling its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza a “genocide” and accusing it of apartheid. He was a prominent advocate for .
But when Rasool took part in a webinar organized by the South African think-tank MISTRA, he criticized Trump’s crackdown on diversity and equity programs and immigration. He further argued that this might have to do with the possibility of a US where white people would soon no longer be the majority of voters, calling it a “supremacist assault on incumbency.”
Soon after, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Rasool was a “race-baiting politician” who “hated America” before declaring him persona non grata.
Rasool said he was merely alerting intellectuals and political leaders in South Africa that the US and its politics had changed.
“I would stand by my analysis because we were analyzing a political phenomenon, not a personality, not a nation, and not even a government,” Rasool said.
Did Rasool cross diplomatic boundaries?
Some analysts have criticized Rasool’s statements as being ill-considered, undiplomatic, and detrimental to the interests of South Africans who benefit from good relations with the US.
“It stood to reason that at some point they will hurt us. It’s just that I didn’t expect it to move at the pace it has,” Breakfast told DW, “It’s going be a mammoth task now to mend this bilateral relationship.”
Added to that is another factor, which the South African government has battled to handle: South African lobby groups operating separately from the South African government.
“There’s a wild card in all of this and that clearly is ex-South Africans, those of South African origin in the United States, that have some sort of axe to grind with South Africa and filters that through the close links within the Trump administration,” Cape Town-based analyst Daniel Silke told DW.
“That’s almost more difficult than dealing with the hard facts on the ground,” Silke told DW.
Most notably, this includes powerful members of South African origin, like but also lobbyists like Afriforum and Solidariteit. Even the so-called Cape Independence Advocacy Group, which seeks independence for the Western Cape province from the rest of South Africa, planned a trip to Washington.
“The audience that Trump has been giving to Solidariteit and Afriforum has given him this information that there are white people in South Africa who are killed on a large scale,” Breakfast told DW.
“It will hurt us most”
“It’s of paramount importance for the South African government to find a way out of this quagmire,” analyst Breakfast told DW.
South Africa is currently president of G20, but US officials have boycotted G20 meetings. Bilaterally, the US is South Africa’s second-largest market for exports after China.
The approximately 600 American firms represent the largest single investor in the country, employing more than 130,000 South Africans. $14.7 billion (€14.1 billion) worth of goods was exported to the United States in 2024.
Silke told DW that South Africa is relatively expendable for the United States economy.
“If you’re going to take action against countries that have foreign policies you believe are antithetical to US interests, like being part of which is certainly something that Trump has commented on, South Africa does become sort of a sitting duck target for the United States,” he said.
American investment in South Africa may be why the presidency referred to the expulsion of a senior diplomat only as
While Rasool and the South African government, have also said improving relations with the US is a priority, his expulsion likely means a rapprochement is unlikely in the near term and the preferential
trade access South Africa gets to American markets appears in jeopardy.
“It might be a lose-lose situation, though I think it will hurt us the most,” Breakfast told DW.
Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu
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