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Associated Press

The South African ambassador who was expelled from the United States and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration was welcomed home at an airport on Sunday by hundreds of supporters who sang songs praising him.
Crowds at Cape Town International Airport surrounded Ebrahim Rasool and his wife Rosieda as they emerged in the arrivals terminal in their hometown, and they needed a police escort to help them navigate their way through the building.
“A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” Rasool told the supporters as he addressed them with a megaphone. “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.”
“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets.”

Rasool was expelled for comments he made on a webinar that included him saying that the Make America Great Again movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct”.
Rasool said on his return home it was important for South Africa to fix its relationship with the US after President Donald Trump punished the country and accused it of taking an anti-American stance even before the decision to expel him.
The US president issued an executive order last month cutting all funding to South Africa, alleging its government is supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran, and pursuing anti-white policies at home.
“We don’t come here to say we are anti-American,” Rasool said to the crowd. “We are not here to call on you to throw away our interests with the United States.”
They were the ex-ambassador’s first public comments since the Trump administration declared him persona non grata over a week ago, removed his diplomatic immunities and privileges, and gave him until this Friday to leave the US.
It is highly unusual for the US to expel a foreign ambassador. Rasool was declared persona non grata by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a post on social media on March 14. Rubio said Rasool was a “race-baiting politician” who hates the US and Trump.

Although Rubio did not directly cite a reason, his post linked to a story by the conservative Breitbart news site that reported on a talk Rasool gave on a webinar organised by a South African think-tank.
In his talk, Rasool spoke in academic language of the Trump administration’s crackdowns on diversity and equity programmes and immigration and mentioned the possibility of a US where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.
“The supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the Maga movement, the Make America Great Again 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 per cent white,” Rasool said in the talk.
On Sunday, he said he stood by those comments, and characterised them as merely alerting intellectuals and political leaders in South Africa that the US and its politics had changed.
“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,” Rasool said.
“I would stand by my analysis because we were analysing a political phenomenon, not a personality, not a nation, and not even a government.”
He also said South Africa would resist pressure from the US – and anyone else – to drop its case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The Trump administration has cited that case against US ally Israel as one of the reasons it alleges South Africa is anti-American.
The Breitbart story Rubio cited when announcing Rasool’s expulsion was written by South African-born senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak, who is Jewish and an ally of the Trump administration.
Pollak is also a contender to be the new US ambassador to South Africa, according to South African media.
Some of the supporters welcoming Rasool, who is Muslim, home to Cape Town waved Palestinian flags and chanted “free Palestine”.
“As we stand here, the bombing [in Gaza] has continued and the shooting has continued, and if South Africa was not in the [International Court of Justice[, Israel would not be exposed, and the Palestinians would have no hope,” Rasool said.
“We cannot sacrifice the Palestinians … but we will also not give up with our relationship with the United States. We must fight for it, but we must keep our dignity.”


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South Africa

Ebrahim Rasool being greeted upon his arrival at Cape Town International Airport. Photo: Reuters

Ebrahim Rasool being welcomed in Cape Town. Photo: Reuters

 South Africa’s embassy in Washington DC. Photo: EPA-EFE

White South Africans supporting US President Donald Trump gather in front of the US embassy in Pretoria on February 15. Photo: AFP

Afrikaans farmers picket in support of an executive order by Trump granting Afrikaners refugee status in the US, outside the US embassy in Pretoria, South Africa on February 15. Photo: EPA-EFE

US expels South African ambassador, saying he ‘hates’ Trump

South Africa’s Ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool speaks at the his country’s embassy in Washington in December 2013. Photo: AP

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Firefighters put out a blaze following a Russian attack near Kyiv on Sunday. Photo: Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP

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Soldiers of Ukraine’s 5th brigade hold a poster thanking the US for support during a flashmob on the front line near Toretsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on March 11. Photo: AP

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World

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United States & Canada

Ebrahim Rasool was expelled after he described Trump’s Maga movement as a supremacist reaction to diversity in the US


Ebrahim Rasool was expelled after he described Trump’s Maga movement as a supremacist reaction to diversity in the US.
