The Scoop
South Africa is scrambling to appoint a new ambassador to the US after the expulsion of its top diplomat last week, according to three people familiar with the matter.
South African government leaders were let down by Ebrahim Rasool’s “indefensible” criticism of US President Donald Trump at a webinar on Tuesday, said the three senior members of the African National Congress, the largest party in the ruling coalition.
On Friday US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates the US and Trump. In the webinar on Mar. 11, Rasool told participants that Trump is leading a “supremacist” movement disrupting long-established political norms.
Semafor first reported last week that Rasool, a veteran diplomat who also served as ambassador during the Obama administration, was struggling to secure crucial meetings in a Republican-led Washington. He is likely to have been frozen out for his prior vocal criticism of Israel in support of Palestine, a South African diplomat told Semafor. But several right-wing Washington sources also said Rasool’s previous Trump criticism, including tweets dating back to 2017, were also of concern.
“Ambassador Rasool was on the verge of an engagement with strategic officials in the White House,” a spokesman for South Africa’s foreign affairs ministry, Chrispin Phiri, told Semafor Africa. “This regrettable development has scuttled the significant progress.”
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The expulsion is the latest controversy in deteriorating relations between Pretoria and the US, South Africa’s second-largest trading partner, since Trump returned to the White House in January.
In February, Trump criticized South Africa’s land expropriation law as discriminatory, incorrectly asserting that land was being seized from white South African farmers. The law, enacted in January, aims to address inequalities dating back to apartheid: Most private land in South Africa is owned by white people, who make up around 7% of the population. It allows the government to confiscate land in exceptional circumstances if deemed to be in the public interest.
Trump ally Elon Musk, who spent much of his childhood in South Africa during apartheid, has criticized South Africa’s Black empowerment policies as a hindrance to Starlink, his satellite internet company, from entering Africa’s most advanced economy. Musk heads up the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, and is leading moves to reduce the size of the US federal government.
Sam’s view
South Africa is in a real pickle. The perfect ambassadorial candidate for the US in the current circumstances is hard to imagine. The ideal person has to walk a tightrope of earning acceptability and credibility in the Trump 2.0 inner sanctum and MAGA politics while also representing South Africa’s fiercely independent stance with its foreign policy. The problem is that the nature of South African politics right now is poles apart from the unfolding scene in the White House.
Several commentators believe at the heart of the conflict between Washington and Pretoria is South Africa’s 2023 decision to launch a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
In addition, Trump has driven a wedge in South Africa by embracing unproven claims of genocide against white South Africans, which have been driven by Afrikaner rights groups.
Rasool’s dramatic expulsion offers South Africa the opportunity to reciprocate should a US ambassador ever publicly criticize its government, said one of the people Semafor spoke with. However, another government official said South Africa was not looking for a tit-for-tat at this stage. It would simply scrutinize a US ambassadorial appointment as it would normally do.
Room for Disagreement
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government need to unpack the worsening relations, and understand what exactly the US government finds offensive about South Africa’s foreign policy, said Tony Leon, former leader of the Democratic Alliance, the country’s second-biggest party. “Its antagonism towards Israel is one, and its cooperation with Iran another,” he said.
The next ambassador has a tough job ahead. “Even if you thought Archangel Gabriel was the best person to represent South Africa in Washington, it’s not going to work without a tool kit to help him assess some of the current challenges,” said Leon, a former South African ambassador to Argentina. “You need someone who will not be a red rag to a bull like Ambassador Rasool was. I would not send an Israel-hater, or someone who is sympathetic to Iran, who would then get frozen out of access.”
Notable
- The new Trump administration has united longstanding political enemies in South Africa, wrote Foreign Policy, cementing the government of national unity.