The South African ambassador who was expelled from the US and declared persona non grata by the administration of US President Donald Trump 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, 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,” Ebrahim Rasool told the supporters as he addressed them with a megaphone. “It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets.”
Photo: Reuters
Ebrahim 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.”
Ebrahim Rasool said on his return home it was important for South Africa to fix its relationship with the US after Trump punished the nation and accused it of taking an anti-US stance even before the decision to expel him.
Trump last month issued an executive order 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,” Ebrahim 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 former ambassador’s first public comments since the Trump administration declared him persona non grata more than a week ago, and removed his diplomatic immunities and privileges.
It is highly unusual for the US to expel a foreign ambassador.
Ebrahim 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 Ebrahim Rasool gave on a Webinar organized by a South African think tank.
In his talk, Ebrahim Rasool spoke in academic language of the Trump administration’s crackdowns on diversity and equity programs 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 percent white,” Ebrahim Rasool said.
Ebrahim Rasool on Sunday said that he said he stood by those comments, and characterized them as merely alerting intellectuals and political leaders in South Africa that the US and its politics had changed.
He also said that 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 Israel as one of the reasons it alleges South Africa is anti-US.
“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,” Ebrahim 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.”
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS