The South African ambassador expelled from the United States over a dispute with President Donald Trump’s administration returned home to a cheering welcome on Sunday, making a strong statement about the decision.
“It was not our choice to return home, but we have returned home with no regrets,” Ibrahim Rasul told hundreds of supporters in Cape Town. He was expelled from Washington for being a “racist inflammatory politician” who hated Trump.
Relations between Washington and Pretoria have deteriorated after Trump cut off economic aid over South Africa’s anti-white land policy, a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, and other foreign policy conflicts.
Rasul was expelled last week by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio after he described Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement as a supremacist response to diversity in America. Former anti-apartheid campaigner Rasul defended his comments on Sunday, speaking to South African intellectuals, political leaders and others, saying that “the old way of doing business with America is not going to work.”
“Until we change the way we speak to America and understand what America is – this is not Obama’s America, this is not Clinton’s America – this is a different America and so our language must not only change in transaction but also in a language that can penetrate a group that clearly identifies a marginalized white community in South Africa as its constituency,” he said. Trump suspended US aid to South Africa in February, citing a law in the country that he alleged allowed land to be seized from white farmers.
Trump has further escalated tensions this month after repeating his accusations, without providing evidence, that the government is “seizing” land from white people by saying South African farmers are welcome to settle in the United States.
