The administration of Trump often clashed with South Africa concerning the aftermath of apartheid and views on Israel.
The administration under President Donald Trump has declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool unwelcome in the United States.
In a social media update on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Rasool was “no longer welcome in our great country.”
“Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who despises America and despises POTUS,” Rubio remarked, using the abbreviation for President of the United States.
“We have nothing to discuss with him, and thus he is deemed PERSONA NON GRATA.”
Rubio referenced his comments to an article from the right-leaning media outlet Breitbart, where Rasool expressed that Trump had galvanized a “supremacist instinct” and “white victimhood” as a “dog whistle” during the 2024 election campaign.
Rasool’s removal comes as the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration criticizing South Africa, a nation that has been a proponent of Palestinian rights and played a significant role in a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel, a US ally, of committing genocidal acts in Gaza.
Earlier this week, the media outlet Semafor reported that Rasool, an experienced diplomat, has been denied what are usually standard opportunities to engage with officials at the US State Department, as well as with high-ranking Republicans, since Trump took office.
Rasool resumed his role as South Africa’s ambassador to the US in January, having previously served from 2010 to 2015 during Barack Obama’s presidency.
South Africa is led by the African National Congress (ANC), a party that originated from the anti-apartheid movement that ended white minority governance in the nation.
However, its administration has been a particular target of ire from the Trump administration and allies, including right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, who has South African roots.
The Trump administration has accused the ANC government of marginalizing its white population.
Trump has cut aid to South Africa and, in February—when the White House had largely ceased refugee admissions for those fleeing violence and oppression—he proposed fast-tracked citizenship for white Afrikaners “escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.”
This announcement was a reaction to a land redistribution law aimed at remedying lingering inequalities from the apartheid era. The South African government contends that Trump is misinformed about this law, which has not resulted in the confiscation of any land.
Vincent Magwenya, a spokesperson for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, informed Reuters that the nation “will not engage in counterproductive megaphone diplomacy”—a nod to Trump’s tendency to broadcast messages about South Africa on social media.
In spite of Trump’s framing of Afrikaners as a beleaguered minority, South African officials assert that the economic impacts of apartheid, wherein white South Africans held nearly complete economic control, continue to contribute to persistent economic disparities between Black and white citizens.
A government audit from 2017 revealed that, while Black individuals constitute 80 percent of South Africa’s population, they own merely 4 percent of privately held farmland.
The white Afrikaners, who possess the vast majority of the country’s farmland, make up only 8 percent of the population.
Rasool and his family were themselves displaced from their home in Cape Town during apartheid, when Black individuals were forcibly relocated to designated non-white regions with minimal resources or economic opportunities.
