Rubio says South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S. ’is no longer welcome’ in the country

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declares South African ambassador persona non grata over Trump criticism.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday (March 14, 2025) that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States “is no longer welcome” in the country, in the latest Trump administration move targeting the African nation.

Mr. Rubio, in a post on X, accused Ebrahim Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump. Mr. Rubio declared the South African diplomat “persona non grata.”

Neither Mr. Rubio, who posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Canada, nor the State Department gave any immediate explanation for the decision.

But Mr. Rubio linked to a Breitbart story about a talk Mr. Rasool gave earlier Friday (March 14, 2025) as part of a South African think tank’s webinar in which he spoke about actions taken by the Trump administration in the context of a United States where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.

Both Mr. Trump and his ally Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa, have criticised the country’s Black-led government over a new land law they claim discriminates against white people.

It is highly unusual for the U.S. to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.

At the height of U.S.-Russia diplomatic expulsions during the Cold War and then again over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, allegations of interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the 2018 poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer in Britain, neither Washington nor Moscow saw fit to expel the respective ambassadors.