On Sunday, 23 March, the South African ambassador expelled from America over a dispute involving President Donald Trump’s administration was welcomed home in Cape Town with a loud welcome.
Ebrahim Raool’s remarks to his supporters were defiant. He was ousted as a politician from Washington after being accused of “racism” and “hating Trump”.
Rasool told the crowds gathered at his arrival that he had no regrets about returning home. His expulsion came after tensions between South Africa and the United States grew, especially after Trump cut off financial aid to Pretoria. He cited disputes over South Africa’s land policy and its case against Israel before the International Court of Justice.
US Secretary Marco Rubio said that Rasool was expelled after he described Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement as a reactionary supremacist response to the growing diversity of the country.
Rasool defended his remarks by explaining that he spoke to South African intellectuals, political leaders and warned them that “the old way of doing business in the US would not work.”
He said, “Unless we changed our way of talking to the US, and recognized what the US was — it’s not the US that Obama or Clinton is, but a different US — then our language needs to change, not only in terms of transactionality, but also to a language which can penetrate a community that has identified a white fringe community of South Africa as its constituency.
The tension between the countries escalated this year after Trump frozen US aid to South Africa. He accused the country of allowing white farmers to lose their land. Trump aggravated the tensions this month by saying that South African farmers are welcome to settle in America, while repeating his allegations without providing any evidence.
