US expels South African ambassador as tensions escalate over land policy and genocide case
South Africa’s presidency said on Saturday that the United States’ decision to expel South Africa’s ambassador was “regrettable,” urging “diplomatic decorum” between the two nations.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was no longer welcome in the US because he was “a race-baiting politician” who hates US President Donald Trump.
“South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” Rubio posted on social media platform X. “We have nothing to discuss with him, and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”
Rubio reposted an article from the right-wing website Breitbart that quoted the South African envoy as saying on Friday that Trump was leading a white “supremacist” movement.
In response, South Africa’s presidency called to maintain “diplomatic decorum” and expressed commitment “to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States of America.”
Chrispin Phiri, spokesperson for South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation, posted on X that the government “will engage through the diplomatic channel.”
Rasool, a former anti-apartheid campaigner, has failed to secure routine meetings with State Department officials and key Republican figures since Trump, a Republican, took office in January, the news website Semafor reported this week.
It cited a South African diplomat as saying Rasool’s pro-Palestinian views and criticism of “Israel” seemed to be the reason for him being shut out.
Ties between the United States and South Africa have deteriorated since Trump cut U.S. financial aid to the country, citing disapproval of its land policy and of its genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Washington’s ally “Israel.”
Last week, Trump further heightened tensions, saying South Africa’s farmers were welcome to settle in the US after repeating his accusations that the government was “confiscating” land from white people.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill in January aimed at making it easier for the state to expropriate land in the public interest. He noted that the government had not confiscated any land, and the policy was aimed at evening out racial disparities in land ownership in the Black-majority nation.
In the wake of the Zionist occupation’s war on Gaza since October 2023, South Africa has brought a genocide case against “Israel’s” actions in the besieged enclave at the International Court of Justice.
On Thursday, United Nations experts said in a report that “Israel” has carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities, and used sexual violence as a war strategy.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” said the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The Commission further noted that those actions, in addition to a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination.
