Above photo: Ebrahim Rasool being greeted by crowds. Khalid Sayed MPL.
South African Ambassador Expelled By The United States.
“We must enter into trade negotiations with the USA because our economy and our people need them. But we must never trade our sovereignty, lest we be told that China and Cuba cannot be our friends,” said veteran diplomat Ebrahim Rasool on his return to South Africa.
Cheering crowds thronged outside the Cape Town International Airport on Sunday, March 23, to welcome the South African ambassador expelled from the US after being subjected to repeated attacks for his stance in solidarity with Palestine.
“Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America,” US State Secretary Marco Rubio accused in a X post on March 15.
“We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON-GRATA,” Rubio added, sharing the alt-right Breitbart News report on the academic observations Rasool had made on the white supremacist character of the “MAGA movement” in a webinar hosted by a South African think tank.
“We will welcome him and say we agree, there is nothing wrong with what he said,” insisted Western Cape Secretary of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Malvern de Bruyn, who was present at his popular reception. Alongside was also the regional leadership of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
A “Badge Of Dignity”
South African police jostled with the crowd to make way for Rasool, who addressed them on a megaphone saying that a “declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” but returning “to crowds like this… I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity.”
His expulsion – just months after his appointment as South Africa’s US ambassador was announced in November – marked a historic low in the relations between the two countries, already souring under the previous Joe Biden-led US administration.
Escalating US Hostility Toward South Africa
US hostility began to escalate after South Africa, like much of the Global South, maintained a non-aligned posture on the war in Ukraine. This intensified after South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, amid its US-funded genocide in Gaza.
“In contrast to its stated stance of nonalignment, the South African Government has a history of siding with malign actors, including Hamas, a US designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and a proxy of the Iranian regime, and continues to pursue closer ties with the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’) and the Russian Federation,” complained the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act, introduced in the US House of Representatives last February.
After Donald Trump assumed the presidency earlier this year, the US has turned increasingly aggressive toward South Africa. Describing its act of taking Israel to the world’s highest court for genocide as an “aggressive” position toward the US, Trump halted all aid and assistance this February.
While restricting US entry to actual refugees, Trump went on to offer “resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program” for South Africa’s European colonial settlers, known as the Afrikaners.
Through colonialism and apartheid, these settlers seized most of South Africa’s land through violence. Over three decades after the defeat of apartheid, this white minority who make up just over 7% of the country’s population still owns 72% of all its farmlands, as a result of its failed land reforms.
In “a symbolic gesture” toward correcting this, the South African government enacted the Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 this January, broadening the scope of the already-existing state powers to expropriate land.
Deeming this a “racially discriminatory property confiscation”, Trump’s executive order last month stated that the US “shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.”
The Role Reversal: Blacks Oppress The Whites
This description echoed the conspiracy theory championed by AfriForum, a South African alt-right, white supremacist lobby group that has long been peddling the narrative of a “white genocide” – not a genocide by the white settlers against the colonized natives, but of them.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, a beneficiary and a product of Apartheid South Africa who was amplifying this narrative on X, went on to become one of the most powerful figures in the Trump administration, albeit unelected.
Appointed as South Africa’s ambassador in the aftermath of Trump’s electoral victory, veteran diplomat Rasool was reportedly denied meetings with the Trump administration’s officials from the start.
“After weeks of sustained assaults on my character and reputation – being called a terrorist, jihadist, Islamist, anti-Semite – it is good to be here at home… where we see the human in each other… even inviting those who despised us, dispossessed us, and discriminated against us, into the fold of human rights,” he told his supporters outside Cape Town airport.
“Such a warm welcome,” he added, “would have been better on returning in three to four years having successfully… destroyed the clear and obvious lie of Afrikaner oppression… and white qualification for refugee status in the USA.”
Diverging Positions On US Relations
Contrasting his defiant posture – cheered by the rank and file of the ruling party and its allies on the left and in the trade union movement – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, however, appeared anxious, urging restraint ahead of Rasool’s arrival.
His spokesperson Vincent Magwenya explained on March 20 that Ramaphosa “is not asking” his supporters to call off the gathering for his welcome, but only to “be considerate about what is at stake with regards to the country’s economy with respect to doing our level best to retain that strategic partnership with the US.”
Rasool also reiterated that “our relationship with the USA is critically important and so we must continue to pursue dialogue and engagement”. However, he set out some “bottom lines” in his speech.
“We can negotiate a lot, but we cannot negotiate away our case against genocide in the ICJ,” he said. “Withdrawing from the International Court of Justice is not an option until Palestine is free and Israel is accountable.”
Sovereignty And BRICS Relationships Are As Important As Trade Relations With US
Acknowledging the “value [of] our trade with the USA,” he added, nevertheless, that it should not be salvaged at the cost of South Africa’s relations with fellow BRICS members and loss of its non-aligned posture, which will leave it with an “unpredictable” US as its only ally.
“We must enter into trade negotiations with the USA because our economy and our people need them. But we must never trade our sovereignty, lest we be told that China and Cuba cannot be our friends. Our friends are the mighty in the G20. But they are also the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the occupied, whether in Sudan or whether in Palestine.”