Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, has been officially declared persona non grata—a diplomatic designation reserved for foreign officials deemed unacceptable by a host country.
The decision follows a series of inflammatory remarks from Rasool, who openly accused former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement of leading a so-called “global white supremacist movement.”
According to Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), when a diplomat is declared persona non grata by the host country, they are effectively ordered to leave the country within a specified timeframe, often 24 to 72 hours, depending on the severity of the situation.
The diplomat’s home country is usually notified through formal diplomatic channels, and their government may choose to recall them voluntarily before forcible expulsion. If the diplomat refuses to leave, the host country can take measures to deport them.
Rubio took to X to make the announcement, writing:
“South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country.
Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates POTUS.
We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”
The announcement was accompanied by an article from Breitbart exposing Rasool’s outrageous comments during a foreign policy seminar in Johannesburg hosted by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).
During the seminar, Rasool launched into a full-scale attack against Trump, his supporters, and conservative movements across the Western world.
He claimed that Trump’s America First policies, opposition to radical left-wing globalist institutions, and criticism of South Africa’s socialist-style land expropriation were all part of a “white supremacist assault on incumbency.”
In his rambling address, Rasool suggested that Trump’s fight against globalism was fueled by racial animosity, rather than a defense of national sovereignty and constitutional principles.
He absurdly stated that Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement was a response to shifting U.S. demographics, portraying it as a desperate bid to maintain “white power.”
Rasool didn’t stop there—he outrageously accused South African Afrikaner farmers, who have been brutally targeted in land expropriation policies, of being part of a global effort to promote “white victimhood.”
Transcript via Breitbart:
What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency, at home, and — I think I’ve illustrated — abroad as well.
So in terms of that, 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% white. And that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon.
And so that needs to be factored in, so that we understand some of the things that we think are instinctive, nativist, racist things, I think that there’s data that, for example, would support that, that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement, et cetera et cetera.
So I think I’d mention that. I think that there is also an export of the revolution. It’s no accident that Elon Musk has involved himself in UK politics, and elevated a Nigel Farage and the Reform movement, in much the same way that he was instructed that on his way to the Munich security summit, Vice President Vance addressed the Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] to strengthen them in their election campaign. A
nd that, then, begins to say, what then was the role of Afrikaners in that whole makeup. And very clearly, it’s to project white victimhood as a dog whistle that there is a global protective movement that is beginning to envelop embattled white communities or apparently embattles white communities.
It may not be true, it may not make sense, but that is not the dog whistle that is being heard in a global, white base. So I think we need to understand all of that. Another discontinuity — it’s almost that they are pitting a supremacist insurgency against the incumbency.
WATCH:
NEWS
The United States has declared South Africa’s Ambassador to the U.S. persona non grata (PNG).
Secretary Marco Rubio announced the decision, citing this clip and referring to Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool as a “race-baiting politician who hates America and [President Trump].”… pic.twitter.com/Dckvf8pxN3
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) March 14, 2025
