South African ambassador ordered to leave US by Friday

The arbitrary expulsion of South Africa’s Ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool on Friday is "just a hiccup" in the relations between the two countries, President Cyril Ramaphosa said as the controversy around the issue raged over the weekend. Ramaphosa was speaking informally to journalists on Monday afternoon for the first time since US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Rasool "persona non grata" in a post on the social media platform X on Friday. This was after Rasool had participated in a discussion hosted earlier on Friday by the South African NGO Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection in which Rasool made comments which angered Rubio enough to call for his repatriation even before any formal diplomatic channels were followed. In his post on Friday, Rubio referred to Rasool as a “race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS.” “South Africa’s ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” Rubio added. In his academic address, Rasool referred to US President Donald Trump’s ‘Maker America Great Again’ campaign as being based on “supremacism”.
“I think what Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those in power, by mobilising supremacism against the incumbency at home and I think I’ve illustrated abroad as well. So in terms of that supremacist assault on incumbency, 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 is projected to become 48 per cent white and that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon,” Rasool had said.
Ramaphosa though expressed optimism that the matter would be resolved amicably, despite relations between South Africa and the US being at an all-time low ever since South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice over the genocide in Palestine last year. Among the first things that Trump did on assuming office recently was stop all funding to South African health projects, which is expected to have a huge impact on the country with the highest HIV/AIDS cases. Trade between the two countries is also under threat as Trump slaps huge import tariffs on friend and foe alike.
What has also heightened the tension is a claim that the South African government plans to expropriate land from the minority white Afrikaner farmers to redistribute it to the majority previously disenfranchised Black community, something which has already been disproved by South Africa as a lie. Trump offered the white farmers resettlement in the US, adding fuel to the fire. But Ramaphosa remained positive about mending relations.