 "South African envoy, kicked out by Trump, receives hero’s welcome at home despite govt’s concerns")
As the South African ambassador to the US arrived home Sunday (March 23) following a spat with President Donald Trump, a dynamic crowd of hundreds offered him and his family a hero’s welcome. Ebrahim Rasool and his wife Rosieda were surrounded by the crowd at Cape Town International Airport’s arrival terminal, requiring them to seek police escort to navigate to their vehicle.
Rasool then grabbed a megaphone and addressed the people gathered outside the terminal: “A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you. But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth … like this, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity.”
He added that while it was not his choice to come home, he had “no regrets”.
Nonetheless, the diplomat warned that South Africa must fix its ties with the Trump administration after the US leader accused his country of taking an anti-America stance.
South Africa-US tussle
On February 7, Trump issued an executive order cutting American funding to South Africa, citing “government actions fuelling disproportionate violence against racially disfavoured landowners.”
Trump’s order referred to Afrikaners. They are a part of white community in South Africa, mostly descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who first visited the country in the 17th century.
Trump’s order identified Afrikaners as victims of “unjust racial discrimination” and directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to offer humanitarian relief to them. At the centre of Trump’s anger against the South African government was a land expropriation law, which he believed would see Afrikaners having their farmland seized.
Another issue of contention between the two governments is South Africa’s allegations of genocide against Israel regarding its war in Gaza.
Amid the unfolding crisis, Rubio earlier this month labelled Ebrahim Rasool a “race-baiting politician”.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsTaking to X, Rubio said the South African diplomat hated the US president and declared he was “no longer welcome in our great country”. It’s extremely rare for US to expel any foreign diplomat like this.
Rubio’s X post targeting Rasool also linked to a story from Breitbart that quoted the envoy as saying that Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US.
“We see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the Maga movement as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white,” he said.
In response, Rubio declared him “PERSONA NON GRATA”.
Ahead of Rasool’s arrival back home on Sunday, the South African government reportedly made efforts to scale back the welcome event at the airport in a bid to avoid giving wrong signals to the Trump administration.
(With inputs from agencies)
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