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Join on Telegram Rabat – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, is “no longer welcome” in the country.
In a post on X, Rubio accused Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who dislikes President Donald Trump and described him as a “persona non grata.”
The move follows Trump’s executive order cutting aid to South Africa, citing concerns over a land expropriation law, which the South African government says has been misrepresented.
In his post announcing Rasool’s expulsion, Rubio linked an article by Breitbart that quoted the South African ambassador as saying that Trump is leading a white supremacist movement in America and around the world.
Rubio did not provide further explanation for the expulsion and The US State Department has not issued an official statement beyond the secretary of states’ remarks.
Rasool made the remarks about Trump at a foreign policy seminar hosted by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg on Friday.
He linked Trump’s foreign policy positions, particularly against South Africa’s property expropriation legislation, to white supremacist motivations.
“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,” Raseel said.
He also suggested that the global movement of white victimhood was part of this white supremacist effort, arguing that it was represented by some South African farmers’ grievances in the US.
Trump’s recent executive order cites concerns over South Africa’s new Expropriation Act, which allows the government to redistribute land in cases where it is deemed underutilized or in public interest.
Trump has criticized the law and said it unfairly targets South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority, who are descendants of Dutch settlers. The executive order refers to Afrikaners as “racially disfavored landowners” and accuses the South African government of seizing property based on race.
South African officials have dismissed Trump’s claims and said they are misinformed. The government insists that the law is meant to address historical injustices from the apartheid era, a period that saw Black South Africans forcibly removed from their land.
