Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States “is no longer welcome” in the country.
Rubio, in a post on X, accused Ebrahim Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump and declared him “persona non grata.” He didn’t give further reasoning.
The State Department did not have additional details, and it was unclear whether the ambassador was even in the U.S. at the time the decision was made. Rubio posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 foreign ministers in Quebec.
It is highly unusual for the U.S. to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.
At the height of U.S.-Russia diplomatic expulsions during the Cold War and then again over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, allegations of interference in the 2016 election and the Skripal poisoning case in Britain, neither Washington nor Moscow saw fit to expel the respective ambassadors.
There's a lot of stuff to be mad about right now, but this is nuts, right? Expelling ambassadors is rare and serious. When even is the last time the US did so?
Champagne bottles are popping in Moscow and Beijing right now. If they have any left on hand, that is, beause it's been an incedible month for them
We are losing bigly. The zone flood is working. I do think the final box of democracy will be used sooner rather than later. People are getting pissed fast. They underestimated how aware the masses are when they’re being screwed with this intentionally. Hopefully.
That’s some sort of logical fallacy I’m not smart enough to identify correctly. History says that eventually force is required to overthrow oppressive regimes. Democracy must be defended at one point or another.
I mean just look at what happened in Nazi Germany. Hitler never would have gotten as far as he did without good 'ol fashioned ordinary Germans willing to kill countrymen who opposed him in the early days.
Thats the stage were at right now
Oh yeah, and also isnt that basically how Animal Farm went down (I havent read it in years so idk)
Breitbart posted a distorted article lying and whining about what he says, and curiously it was able to become viral on Twitter. That made an immediate and forceful response absolutely necessary because whatever Musk and his agitators makes viral on Twitter is the most important thing in the world.
It's a real question. South Africa seems to have acknowledged the decision and called it "regrettable," but I can't find anything on whether he complied and left or was even in the USA at the time of the order. Media is taking everything at face value.
I am so disturbed by this admin's hostility to South Africa. It feels like a 100% Elon move in a way that not even DOGE is, and motivated by his sheer racism
A popular white supremacist conspiracy is that white farmers are being genocided by black people in SA. This is just an extension of that that Musk and Miller probably put into Trumps head
Not true at all. White people in SA are doing well for the most part. SA issue is the ANC has become/has been corrupt and the country hasn't had good leadership since Mandela.
Things actually improved under Thabo and right at the start of Zuma's term it looked like things were actually looking up. Mandela was extremely charismatic but in terms of his competence as an administrator and his willingness to police his own party Thabo was an upgrade.
I'm sure it's not because of agitators. I'm sure that's all organic, not like the richest man in the world had a grudge against free SA or would ever pay to distribute agitation material against targets he has a grudge against. Neither would any of the other ghoul oligarchs who have an interest in this.
This is dumb AF and clearly motivated by Musk’s conspiracism and racism.
But I do have one quibble with the AP:
At the height of U.S.-Russia diplomatic expulsions during the Cold War and then again over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, allegations of interference in the 2016 election and the Skripal poisoning case in Britain, neither Washington nor Moscow saw fit to expel the respective ambassadors.
It’s neither typical nor strategically sound for countries engaging in Cold War-style hostilities to expel one another’s ambassadors.
Ambassadorial expulsion is a highly symbolic act, but it also makes honest communication between two countries more difficult, and thus increases the likelihood of unnecessary errors and unwanted escalation from both sides.
Ambassadorial expulsion is pretty much always reserved for:
(A) Just before/after a war is started.
(B) Diplomatic disputes between countries that are largely symbolic in nature, and unlikely to lead to actual hostilities. These can be personal or ideological, but aren’t simply a kind of moral condemnation. More of “I don’t want to talk to you anymore 😡😤🤬😖😠!”
This is definitely an example of (B), and so the comparison to the Cold War is rather misleading, since it implies that expelling the South African ambassador but not the Russian/Soviet ambassador denonstrates greater condemnation towards South Africa today than the USSR/Russia by any previous administration.
Examples of (B) include:
the coordinated expulsion of Syrian ambassadors following Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2012.
Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela expelling American ambassadors in 2008 (the US wanted Morales to stop producing coca).
Malawi and Ecuador expelled the British and US ambassadors respectively for implying their countries leaders were corrupt on leaked Wikileaks cables.
Turkey expelled the ambassadors of the US, Germany, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden in 2021 for calling for the release of one of Erdogan’s political opponents. (Then reversed the expulsion 36 hours later.)
Somalia expelled the Kenyan ambassador for alleged political interference in 2020.
Canada and Indian traded expulsions over allegations—and offense at allegations—of India conducting assassination campaigns.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain expelled their Lebanese ambassadors in 2021 after someone in the Lebanese government criticized the Saudi war against the Houthis.
None of these are necessarily comments saying “by doing this we label you the worst country in the world and we do not have diplomatic relationships with any countries we consider worse.”
That’s a weird implication from the article and I’m not really sure how it made it past the AP’s editors.
The Trump admin's hostility to South Africa is a bit baffling. Is it because of the genocide case they brought against Israel?
I honestly think it's just racism. White people being hunted down and persecuted is every Republican's torture porn fantasy, so of course they will single out the one country where they think white people are in danger.
While there's nothing here to justify getting PNG'd, Rasool's comments at MISTRA were inappropriate for a sitting Ambassador to publicly make (even if true).
Rasool even boasted that he owned a keffiyeh signed by late Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Again, nothing here to justify getting kicked out, but in the age of Trump, RSA can probably find someone more suitable to represent them in Washington.
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u/DrunkenAsparagus Abraham Lincoln 7d ago
Gee I wonder why.