The US effectively expels South Africa's ambassadors to Washington, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio accusing the envoy of hating the country and hating President Donald Trump.
“The US ambassador for South Africa is no longer welcome in our great country,” Rubio posted on X on Friday.
Rubio accused Ambassador Ebrahim Lasor of being a “retiring politician who hates America and hates @potus,” and referenced Trump on the handle of his White House X account. “We have nothing to talk to him, so he is considered Persona Non Grata.”
Neither Rubio nor the State Department immediately explained the decision. However, Rubio links to Breitbart's story about a talk that LaSaul gave on Friday as part of a webinar for a South African think tank, where he spoke about the actions the Trump administration took in a US context where white people are no longer in majority.
Rasool points out Elon Musk's outreach for far-right figures in Europe, calling it “dog whi” and “dog whi.”
Rasool became the party of Nelson Mandela, a former anti-apartheid campaigner who served time in prison for his activism and became a politician at the African National Congress, and the country's first apartheid president.
The expulsion of ambassadors is a very rare move by the US, but low diplomats are more frequently targeted with non-persona Grata status.
A call to the South African embassy by the Associated Press for comment made at the end of workday was not answered.
This is the latest development in the heightened tensions between Washington and Pretoria. In February, Trump frozen our aid to South Africa and cited the laws of the country that claimed he allowed the land to be seized from white farmers.
Last week, Trump spurred more tensions, saying South African farmers welcomed them to settle in the US after repeated accusations that the government was “confiscating” the land from white people.
Trump posted on his true social platform: “Peasanctuaries (with family!) from South Africa are trying to escape from the country for security reasons, but will be invited to the United States on a rapid path to citizenship.”
One of Trump's closest allies is South Africa-born billionaire Musk, who accused South Africa's government of Cyril Ramaphosa of having “open and racist possession laws.”
South Africa was ruled by white African leaders during apartheid. Apartheid has vehemently suppressed the country's black majority, including forcing them to live in isolated towns and rural “hometowns.” Africans descended primarily from the Dutch, and not only did the Dutch begin colonizing South Africa in 1652, they are also Dutch-sponsored French Huguenot refugees.
More than 30 years after the white minority rules ended, South Africa remains extremely unequal, with land and wealth still concentrated among white people, who make up most of the population, with about half of the Indigenous Afrikaans speakers and 81% of black people.
However, some South Africans claim they are discriminated against, and often cite the country's positive conduct laws.
At the G20 event in South Africa last month, Ramaphosa said he made a “great” call with Trump shortly after the US leader took over in January. However, the relationship later “appeared to be a little off the rail,” he said.
In Friday's webinar, Rasool speaks on video conferences – spoke in the academic language of the Trump administration's crackdown on diversity and equity programs and immigration.
“The supremacist attack on the incumbent, we see it in the American domestic politics, the Magazine movement, and the great American movement. It deals with not only supremacist instincts, but also very clear data showing the massive demographic changes in the United States, where US voters are expected to be 48% white.
Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
