South African ambassador to US not welcomed to America, US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said in what comes a US expulsion of SA envoy Ebrahim Rasool.
“South Africa’s ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” Rubio posted on X on Friday.
Rubio claims the envoy Ebrahim Rasool of hating the US and its President Donald Trump. There is also suggestion of Rasool campaigning racism- another major of Rubio’s accusations against Rasool.
The US secretary of state accused ambassador Ebrahim Rasool of being “a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS”, referring to Trump by his White House X account handle. “We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered persona non grata.”
Both Rubio and the state department have declined to give immediate explanation for Rasool’s throw out.
However, the Guardian claims that Rubio latched onto a story by news network Breitbart about a talk the envoy gave earlier on Friday as part of a South African thinktank’s webinar in which he spoke about actions taken by the Trump administration in the context of a US where white people would soon no longer be a majority.
Rasool pointed to Elon Musk’s outreach to far-right figures in Europe, calling it a “dog whistle” in a global movement trying to rally people who see themselves as part of an “embattled white community”.
Rasool is a former anti-apartheid campaigner who served time in prison for his activism and went on to become a politician in the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, the country’s first post-apartheid president.
The expulsion of an ambassador is a very rare move by the US, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.
South African presidency have responded to the latest expulsion passed down to the country, saying in an online post that it had noted the “regrettable expulsion of South Africa’s ambassador” and urged everyone to maintain the “established diplomatic decorum” on the matter.
The expulsion flow into the rising tensions between Washington and Pretoria.
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