In a rare move, the Trump administration expelled Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, in mid-March 2025. In a post on X, US secretary of state Marco Rubio accused Rasool of hating the US and President Donald Trump, and said the ambassador was “no longer welcome in our great country”. The expulsion came after comments Rasool had made during a webinar organised by a South African think-tank, the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Studies. Rasool had said he thought that Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US.
Relations between the two countries had reached a new low in the first weeks of the Trump administration. Trump had lashed out at South Africa for taking Israel to the International Court of Justice on accusations of genocide in Gaza; frozen all funding to South Africa; and offered asylum to white Afrikaners from South Africa, emboldening fringe far-right groups in the country. Peter Vale, regarded as an authority on South Africa’s place in the world, answers questions about the ambassador’s expulsion.
What was your initial reaction to the Rasool appointment?
I know and respect Ebrahim Rasool – we worked together at the University of the Western Cape 30 years ago – and I also thought he had done a fine job as ambassador to the US during the Obama years.
Remember, his appointment under the Trump administration was announced a week after the November poll. Preparations for this would have been months in the making. So, one question was, did the South African government think Joe Biden would win? If so, they were not following the polls very closely. South Africa’s relations with the US under Biden, although at times testy, were managable and Rasool was familiar with the individuals responsible for their making.
More importantly, both Rasool and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation seemed to ignore the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ warning:
Never step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.
Politics in the US has changed in paradigmatic proportions since Obama.
Then there was the fact that Rasool’s politics are rooted at the sharpest edge of the African National Congress: the United Democratic Front faction. Speaking plainly in the language of the country’s streets was the gift the United Democratic Front gave national politics. It was the most important internal anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, bringing together youth, student and civic organisations.
Nevertheless, this, the language of the heart (as we might call it), has been eclipsed by the rise of techno-speak of the 2020s – a language that consists of buzzwords, esoteric language, or technical jargon and has become a kind of diplo-speak: diplomatic language in which the careful use of euphemism and noncontroversial language obscures points that might cause contention. Both bedevil South Africa’s domestic politics and mute the country’s foreign policy because racial justice, gender equality and compensation for colonialism seemingly have no place in everyday political discourse.
What happened at the Mapungubwe seminar?
The fracas arose during a virtual seminar organised by a leading South African think-tank which discussed the deepening tension in the relations between Pretoria and Washington.
The late South African politician Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, who was brilliant with words, used to distinguish between (what he called) a conspiracy and a cock-up. Sometimes, however, it can be a mix of both.
I think that Rasool was confounded by the audience to which he spoke – was it local or was it local and foreign?
If there was deceit in the gathering itself, this was not to Rasool’s account. This points instead to a journalist looking to trip up any position South Africa took in the matter seemingly to advance his career. This is said to be the Breitbart journalist Joel Pollack, who made no secret of his desire to be the US ambassador in South Africa. He was registered as “Anonymous” on the webinar call. He did not disclose his name, or profession, when he asked Rasool a question.
In my opinion, disclosure is a professional responsibility.
Interestingly, there is no indication that the meeting was operating under the well-known Chatham House Rule by which
participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor any other participant, may be revealed.
Although not without its critics, myself included, this rule binds participants to non-disclosure by creating a safe space for candid and honest discussion.
Where does the responsibility of an ambassador lie?
The consensus among observers and commentators that’s emerged since the expulsion is that it was Rasool’s responsibility to hold his tongue – a kind of golden rule in diplomacy.
There is another way of thinking about this.
There have been many cases where the professional responsibility of diplomatic representation should follow a higher standard than that set by the incumbent government.
This choice faced diplomats in the country during apartheid. So, for instance, in 1986, the apartheid government expelled the Swedish ambassador following that country’s strong opposition to apartheid. There were other expulsions, too. These moves were part of the broader international pressure surrounding apartheid, where responsibility of the diplomats shifted from the minority incumbent government to the country’s people.
However, most famously, this understanding emerged in the writing of Thomas Paine, the American pamphleteer, that Benjamin Franklin (then the ambassador of the fledgling United States to Paris) was “not the diplomat of a Court, but (that the Ambassador) represented MAN (KIND)”.
This intervention is regarded as the first recognition that human – as opposed to state – rights enjoyed currency in international relations.
The age of turbulence through which we live has further muddied this water.
What do you make of the reaction to Rasool’s explusion?
A cacophony of voices, both within and without the country, have debated the pros and cons of the American decision.
Much has been predictable in content and source. Some garbled. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki was schoolmasterish during a lecture he gave following Rasool’s expulsion, but he reminded the country of the tremendous power that ambassadors had at hand.
Of concern to those with an ethical interest in international relations was that the trope “the national interest” appeared again and again and that, as it did so, the form it took was economic. So, it is in the national interest that South Africa “grow the economy”, “create jobs” and “fight HIV” with American money.
Nevertheless, le affaire Rasool has reminded South Africans that the country also has other “national interests” like fighting climate change and defending human rights worldwide.
Peter Vale, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria., University of Pretoria
