WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the US ambassador for South Africa is “no longer welcome” domestically in the latest Trump administration targeting African countries.
In a post on X, Rubio accused Ebrahim Lasor of being a “racial offering politician” who hates President Donald Trump. Rubio declared the South African diplomat “Persona Nongrata.”
Rubio, who posted when he was back in Washington from a group of seven foreign ministers held in Canada, also did not immediately explain the decision.
But Rubio linked the story of LaSaul's speech on Friday, as part of a webinar for a South African think tank, where he spoke about the actions the Trump administration took in a US context where white people are not going to be immediately majority.
Growing up in South Africa, Trump and his ally Elon Musk criticized the country's black-led government for a new land law that claims to discriminate against white people.
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 allegations of addiction by the former British Russian intelligence officer, neither Washington nor Moscow were suitable to expel their respective ambassadors.
A statement from the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's office said he had “recognized the unfortunate expulsion” of Rasool, calling the diplomat “to maintain the established diplomatic ornament in his involvement in the matter.”
“South Africa remains committed to building mutually beneficial relationships with the United States,” the statement said.
Rasool previously served as his country's US ambassador from 2010 to 2015 before returning to the Post in 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 anti-apartheid campaigner, spending time in prison for his activism 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.
Speaking on a video conference in Friday's webinar, Rasool spoke in the academic language of the Trump administration's crackdown on diversity and equity programs and immigration.
“The supremacist attack on the incumbent, we see it in America's domestic politics, the Magazine movement, and the great American movement. It deals with not only supremacist instincts, but also very clear data showing the massive demographic changes in the United States, where US voters are expected to be 48% white.
He points out masks' outreach to far-right figures in Europe, calling it “dog whi.”
LaSaul did not make an attack directed at Trump, instead offered tips on how to deal with his administration, saying, “This is not a moment of hostility towards the US,” and “Let's avoid anything that cocks Snoot in the US.”
His expulsion comes after Trump signs it Presidential Order Aid and support for 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.
South African Government It denies that new laws are tied to race And he says Trump's claims and laws against the country are full of misinformation and distortion.
Trump said the land is being expropriated from Africans if the land is not taken under the law.
The law allows the government to take land in certain cases that are not used or in places in public interest if it is redistributed. We aim to address some of those mistakes The racist apartheid era in South Africawhen the blacks had the land that was taken from them.
Trump has also announced plans to provide African refugee status in the United States. They are just some of the white minority in South Africa.
Musk leading Trump Government Efficiency Bureauhighlighting land law in a social media post, casting it as a threat to white minority in South Africa.
Earlier this month, Musk also said he targeted the South African government about his business decisions and chose not to do business with his star link, “Because I'm not black.”
