The South African government has expressed hope of continued relations with the USA even after Donald Trump’s administration expelled South Africa’s ambassador Ebrahim Rasool accusing him of race-baiting.
Secretary of State Marcon Rubio made the announcement via his official X account on Friday night.
This as South Africa struggles to gain an audience with Trump and those around him who have sought to misrepresent the country’s policies and have amplified false claims of the mass killings of white Afrikaners.
Rubio also accuses Rasool of hating Trump.
“South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country. Ebrahim 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,” said Rubio in the post.
Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya described Rasool’s ejection by Washington as “regrettable” and called for adherence to established diplomatic practices.
“The Presidency has noted the regrettable expulsion of South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States of America, Mr. Ebrahim Rasool. The Presidency urges all relevant and impacted stakeholders to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter. South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States of America,” said Magwenya in a brief and restrained reaction.
It appears Rubio is acting in retaliation after Rasool accused Trump of leading a white supremacist movement in the US and around the world.
“What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilising 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,” Rasool is quoted as saying during a recent address to the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg.
South Africa has been at the receiving end of attacks, one after the other by the Trump administration which has been proven to take decisions in a rush and making announcements largely on X owned by a central figure in the White House Elon Musk.
With no formal statement, it remains to be seen if Rubio’s decision means the closure of the South African embassy in Washington.
The government of South Africa is yet to comment on the matter.