The South African ambassador, who was expelled from the US and declared Persona non-grata by the Trump administration, was welcomed into the home by hundreds of supporters who sang songs praise him on Sunday.
The crowd at Cape Town International Airport surrounded Ebrahim Lasol and his wife Rosieda, who appeared at their home country's arrival terminal, and needed police escorts to help them pass through the building.
“The Persona Nongrata declaration is intended to humiliate you,” Lasor told his supporters when he spoke to them through a megaphone. “But when you return to such a crowd, with warmth… like this, I will wear my Persona non-grata as a badge of dignity.”
“Bringing home was not our choice, but we'll go home without regrets,” he said.
Rasool was banished for comments he made in a webinar, which he included, saying the Maga movement was a response to “supervised instincts.”
LaSaul said South Africa returned home to say it was important for them to correct ties with the US after he accused Donald Trump of taking an anti-American stance even before his decision to punish the country and expel him.
Last month, the US president issued an executive order cutting all funds to South Africa, claiming that the government supports Palestinian extremist groups Hamas and Iran and pursues anti-white policies at home.
“We're coming here and not saying we're anti-American,” Lasole told the crowd. “We are not here to call you to abandon our interests with the United States.”
They were the first public comments of the former Ambassador since the Trump administration declared his Persona Non Grata over a week ago, stripping his diplomatic immunity and privileges, and giving him to leave the United States until this Friday.
It is very rare for the US to expel ambassadors.
Lasor was declared Persona Non Grata by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a post on March 14th in X. Rubio said LaSaul is a “racial politician” who hates the United States and Trump.
Rubio did not directly quote the reason, but his post linked to the story of a conservative Breitbart news site that reported on a talk given by Rasool at a webinar hosted by a South African think tank. In his speech, LaSaul spoke in the academic language of the Trump administration's crackdown on diversity and equity programs and immigration, referring to the possibility of America where white people won't be immediately majority.
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“The supremacist attack on the incumbent, we see it in America's domestic politics, the Magazine movement, and the great American movement. We respond not only to supremacist instincts, but also to very clear data showing massive demographic changes in the United States, where US voters are expected to be 48% white,” Rasool said.
On Sunday he confronted those comments and said he characterized South African intellectuals and political leaders as simply warning that the United States and its politics had changed.
“It's not Obama's US, not Clinton's US, but another US, so our language has to change,” Lathole said. “We support analysis because we were analysing political phenomena, not personalities, not nations, and even governments.”
He also said South Africa will resist US pressure to lower the case at the International Court of Justice, which has condemned Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Trump administration cites its incident against our alliance, Israel, as one reason to claim South Africa is anti-American.
