The ambassador of South Africa to the US “is no longer welcome in our great country,” according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio said in a post on X that “Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates” President Donald Trump.
“He is regarded as PERSONA NON GRATA because we have nothing to discuss with him,” Rubio wrote. A person is typically forced to leave the host nation after being declared persona non grata (PNG), which is a harsh diplomatic reprimand.
Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, described the decision as “regrettable” and pledged to establish a “mutually beneficial relationship.”
“The Presidency urges all relevant and impacted stakeholders to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter,” Ramaphosa’s office said in a statement.
Rubio’s post linked to an article from the right-wing news outlet Breitbart about Rasool’s comments to a think tank on Friday about Trump’s election and presidency.
The PNG declaration against Rasool is the latest chapter in the plummeting relationship between the US and South Africa. There had been tensions between the two countries under the Biden administration but since Trump began his second term the US has taken a series of punitive measures against South Africa, whose government has received criticism not just from Trump, but also his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country.
Both Trump and Musk have alleged that White farmers in the country are being discriminated against under land reform policies that South Africa’s government says are necessary to remedy the legacy of apartheid.
In the comments that seem to have triggered Rubio’s persona non grata (PNG) declaration, Rasool was discussing the “continuities” from the Biden administration as well as the “discontinuities.”
“What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency at home and … abroad as well,” said Rasool, who was on his second tour as ambassador to the US.
He said that the Make America Great Again movement was a response “not simply to a supremacist instinct,” but to shifts in US demographics “in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white and that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon.”
