The South African ambassador who was expelled from the United States amid a dispute with President Donald Trump’s administration arrived home to a raucous welcome in Cape Town on Sunday, March 23.
Ebrahim Rasool, who was ousted from Washington over accusations of being a “race-baiting politician” who “hates Trump,” struck a defiant tone in his remarks to the crowd of supporters.
“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets,” Rasool said, addressing the hundreds of people gathered to greet him. His expulsion followed rising tensions between the United States and South Africa, particularly after Trump cut financial aid to Pretoria, citing disputes over South Africa’s land policy, its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and other foreign policy differences.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Rasool’s expulsion came after he described Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement as a supremacist reaction to the nation’s growing diversity.
Rasool, a former anti-apartheid campaigner, defended his remarks, explaining that he was speaking to South African intellectuals and political leaders, warning them that the “old way of doing business with the US was not going to work.”
He added, “Unless we change our way of speaking to the US and recognizing what the US is — it is not the US of Obama, it is not the US of Clinton — it is a different US and therefore our language must change not only to transactionality but also a language that can penetrate a group that has clearly identified a fringe white community in South Africa as their constituency.”
The tension between the two nations escalated earlier this year when Trump froze US aid to South Africa, accusing the country of allowing land to be seized from white farmers. This month, Trump further aggravated the situation by suggesting that South African farmers were welcome to settle in the United States, repeating his accusations without providing evidence of land confiscations.
