Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the US ambassador for South Africa is “no longer welcome” within the country in the latest Trump administration's move to target African countries.
In a post on X, Rubio accused Ebrahim Lasol of hating President Donald Trump and being a “racebait politician” who declared himself “persona non-grata.”
Rubio is linked to Breitbart's story about a talk that Rasool gave at a webinar at a South African think tank.
Speaking at the video conference, LaSaul spoke about Trump's ally Elon Musk's outreach to the far-right figures in Europe.
The State Department had no additional details regarding the ban, so it was unclear whether Rasool was even in the United States at the time the decision was made.
Rubio posted when he was back in Washington from a group of seven foreign ministers holding a conference in Canada.
It is very rare for the US to expel foreign ambassadors, but lower diplomats target persona's non-grata status more frequently.
At the height of the US and Russia's diplomatic expulsion during the Cold War, and again Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, allegations of interference in the 2016 US election, and addiction to former UK Russian intelligence agent, neither Washington nor Moscow were fit to expel their respective ambassadors.
A call to the South African embassy for comment at the end of work day was not answered.
Rasool previously served as his country's ambassador from 2010 to 2015 before returning to January.
As a child, he and his family were kicked out of the Cape Town neighborhood, which was designated for white people. LaSaul became an active anti-apartheid campaigner, spending time in prison and identified him as a comrade of Nelson Mandela, the first post-apartheid president.
He later became a political party politician at the African National Congress in Mandela.
His ouster comes after Trump signed an executive order calling for assistance and support to the Black-led South African government.
In turn, Trump said Africans in South Africa, primarily descendants of Dutch colonies, are being targeted by new laws that allow the government to expropriate private land.
The South African government has denied that the new law is race-related, saying Trump's claims and laws against the country are full of misinformation and distortions.
Trump said the land is being expropriated from Africans when land is not taken under the law.
Trump has also announced plans to offer African refugee status in the United States
They are just a part of the white minority in South Africa.
The expropriation law was signed into law earlier this year by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to allow the government to take land in certain instances that are not in use, or in the public interest if it is redistributed.
It aims to address some of the mistakes of South Africa's racist apartheid era when black people are forced to take their land from them and live in designated areas for non-white people.
Musk, who grew up in South Africa and heads Trump's government efficiency, highlights the law in social media posts, casting it as a threat to white minorities in South Africa.
