By Thobile Jiwulane
The relations between South Africa and the United States are deteriorating with time due to Donald Trump’s now-notorious isolationist foreign policy approach. Now it came to a stage where the US expelled the South African Ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, after he made a statement critical of the Trump administration’s attitude towards not only South Africa but the rest of the world including Europe and NATO.
This after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Rasool, as a persona non grata, which means the envoy is unwanted in America. This marks the beginning of the worsening of the already frosty relations between Washington and Pretoria. The latest fallout came after Rasool on Friday criticized the Trump administration for its “assault on the incumbency” and using “naked punitive coercion” as a currency of exchange and “mobilising supremacism” at home and abroad. According to the envoy, these were represented by the MAGA movement, the US domestic politics and demographic shift in US voting patterns since Trump came.
The relations had turned sour after President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that South Africa violated the rights of Afrikaners, particularly white farmers, whom he offered refugee status and further announced a decision to give them American citizenship. However, Afrikaners are the most privileged group in South Africa owning the most of its land at 72% and all wealth.
Now the world is waiting to hear what will be Trump’s response – whether he would endorse Rubio’s pronouncement on X about the Ambassador’s isolation and pending expulsion from Washington. It’s a matter of time before Trump tweets on the issue and whatever he says would impact South African significantly.
Should Trump endorse Rubio’s statement, the diplomatic crisis between the two countries would worsen and could lead to severing of ties between them, although South Africa persistently pursues a diplomatic solution. Conservative sources in South Africa believe that the country would be expelled from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) tariffs arrangement which gives sub-Saharan Africa free access to the US markets with tariff concessions.
Pretoria’s initial response to Rubio was through a tweet from Minister of International Relations and Co-operation’s Ronald Lamola’s spokesperson, Chrispin Phiri. Early this morning, Phiri tweeted: “We have noted the tweet by the US Secretary of State Mr Marco Rubio. We will engage through the diplomatic channel.” In an South African Broadcasting Corporation interview later, Lamola expressed regret at the US decision but further indicated they would pursue the matter including sending the country’s Presidential Envoys to the US to help resolve the impasse.
Rasool made the statement during a webinar organised and hosted by think-tank, Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) in Johannesburg on Friday. Rasool was a keynote speaker and part of a panel of five guests who participated in an intellectual debate on the topic: “Implications of changes in US administration for South Africa and Africa”. The debate was moderated by Mistra’s director of operations, Dr Abba Omar.
Rasool’s sin was to speak the truth about the state of affairs under Donald Trump and how global matters were manipulated to shape his ideals of a great America. He highlighted the multiplicity of changes that have happened within 50 days since Trump was sworn in as US President on 20 January 2025.
In his address, Rasool mentioned the fact that Trump inherited many continuities from the Biden administration, which put pressure on AGOA pertaining to South Africa due to some of its geopolitical stances. “It’s a continuity from the Biden administration where the resistance to the emerging multipolarity in the world started to be articulated and it is from the Biden administration that we saw the very frenetic attempts to maintain the US ideological hegemony particularly in the way in which it armed for example Ukraine and Israel for that hegemony,” Rasool said.
Trump pursues discontinuity from the Biden administration
At the same time, there were also significant discontinuities that should be recognised from the Trump administration that were marked by disrespect for the institutional base of the current hegemonic order. This could be seen in the way that the Russian negotiations were being conducted (by Trump). The envoy also highlighted that there is very little healthy disrespect for NATO, the sense of whether the UN is as important, the bypassing of monies from the US from the World Bank and the IMF. These have clearly become a clear discontinuity in the new administration. Rasool said it was in South Africa’s interest to watch whether Trump’s disrespect would persist and be sustained on the G20 as the country would hand over the G20 presidency to the US. He Rasool said the second discontinuity was Trump’s launch of an assault on incumbency, those who are in power by mobilising a supremacism against the incumbency at home as well as abroad.
Such assault on incumbency was epitomised by US domestic politics, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement “as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct but to very clear data that show great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate is projected to become 48% white and that the possibility of a majority of the minorities is looming on the horizon”.
“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 is data that, for example, which supported the idea that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement, etc. “I think 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 it was instructive that on his way to the Munich Security Summit, Vice-President Vance addressed the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) to strengthen them in their election campaign.
(And) that then begins to say what then is the role of the Afrikaners in that whole make-up. Very clearly, it’s a project of the white victimhood as a dark whistle that there is a global protective movement that is beginning to embattle white communities or apparently embattle white communities. It may not be true, it may not make sense but that is not the dark whistle that is heard in a global white base. I think we need to understand all of that.”
Another discontinuity is Trump’s pitying insurgency against incumbency and therefore the need for South Africa to rethink our old categories of rationalisation. In that category there are mainstream Republicans like Mitt Rumney and so forth that are seen as part of the incumbency that are also embattled under Trump. So it’s an intra-party insurgency as well as global insurgency and the national one in the USA.
“It’s forcing critical transitions in the world, the idea of undermining incumbency. It’s firing and forcing transitions from a system where the incumbent violated and disregarded rules to one where there are minimal to no rules and conventions that are at play at home or abroad.”
“It’s a transition from self-impunity to hard impunity, in-your-face impunity. It’s a transition from rules-based duress to punitive coercion, naked punitive coercion as the currency of exchange. And it’s a way to deal with emerging multilateralism and shifting, for example, from a focus on BRICS where the Biden administration was very obsessed with BRICS as the locus of the multilateral movement emerging to Trump being an “equal opportunity engager”, using power over the whole world, using economic power particularly. So I think that’s what we are able to discern from this side,” Rasool said.
What is this power that is being exercised all about?
I think the power being exercised is of the shock-and-all variety. I think the shock-and-awe is exercised across the USA – we’ve seen DOGE at work, we’ve seen the borders, we’ve seen the attack on DEI and wokeism and we’ve seen social cut in the USA.
Secondly, at the global level, we all know the stopping of aid and assistance, the multilateral financing system is being brought down through, for example, anything that sounds like climate change, the trade and tariffs, geopolitics and so on, dominated the Trump agenda and then South Africa fitted into that. “We are not unique in all of that, but we fit into that because we are the historical antidote to supremacism, the success story of it,” Rasool said.
The ambassador said the GNU was under-appreciated in South Africa but (outside) the GNU was seen as the second miracle after the democratic era in South Africa. The world appreciated that the ANC accepted the defeat, and that it formed the GNU.
“We have what I think are hot potato issues – the Israel and ICJ issues, the Afrikaner issues, BRICS and the de-dollarisation, China and Taiwan liaison office, the allegations of the Iran funding and the Russia-Ukraine war question. It also faced bread and butter issues of economic nature with the US which cut aid up to $8 billion at the very least. Yet to be imposed were the tariffs that the country was being threatened and the question of AGOA. First stay calm and don’t panic, I know there is a lot of panic being engendered because they see delegations coming into the US and saying when is the President sending his envoys? I think let the pushback and the walkback mature in the USA and see what the town-hall meetings are doing until next year’s electoral predictions because that would do half the work that we think our envoys can be doing,” Rasool said.
On the Afrikaner issue, which he said created outrage in South Africa, the envoy said the issue had actually helped to create enormous self-mobilisation behind South Africa, a consolidation of the African base and a return of South Africa’s old allies that were previously disenchanted over the country’s positions on Israel or Russia. Those were coming back and they saw the Trump attack on the country as significant while describing the Afrikaner issue as ludicrous.
New allies were being brought from Europe, which was rallying to come to South Africa. “Again don’t panic in South Africa about it, it’s working in our favour in the USA,” he said. Thirdly we are engaging the lawmakers and we are putting the deposits so that when fear subsides of the White House, we have planted the alternative view. So, we are doing that kind of seedling work.
Fourthly, let other formations that are coming here have their say, lets absorb it. They are not seeing high-level people but they are high-level media pushers. Therefore let’s absorb that message and respond comprehensively, not toe-to-toe because that’s the fight we must avoid, as the official voice of SA. Fifthly, let’s hold, as in rugby, our impact players back, like our envoys and so forth, because you don’t come to empty doors.
He said that crucial positions in the US administration were not yet filled, including the Africa division that was not yet in place – no assistant secretary for Africa and under-secretary and therefore SA would be “knocking on empty doors” if it sent delegations or envoys to the US. “So you’ve got to wait for a reasonable filling of those doors before you come. Don’t come empty-handed, be ready to deal, don’t come and say oh we want to discuss this and to explain that to you. There is no room for explanation. You saw the Zelensky effect. If you prevaricate, you are a loser. You’ve got to come here knowing what’s your top-line, what’s your middle-line and what’s your bottom-line and then put it forward as a negotiating strategy, otherwise you are a loser, you’ll be subjected to the Zelensky effect,” Rasool said.
Rasool cautioned South Africa to handle the handover of the G20 presidency to the US with care. Managed the G20 handover, salvage that baby from the bath-water because the healthy disrespect for global institutions, may just, if we play our cards right, be the way in which when we hand over to Donald Trump after four years of Global South leadership of the G20, there maybe possibly one President that could reform some of the global architecture because it has a healthy disrespect for it. So let us hope that in the idea, a broken clock being right twice a day, that we are able to manage how we do that,” he said.
This is a serious decision that the US has ever taken against South Africa and that could have wide-ranging implications on the relations between the two countries. At some point, in retaliation for Rasool’s expulsion, South Africa might be forced to do the same with the US envoy or even break diplomatic ties with the US completely. It would be easy for the US because the Biden-deployed Ambassador to South Africa, Dr Reuben Brigety returned home after Biden’s administration term ended.
It is feared that the unpredictable Trump administration could even impose sanctions on some ANC individuals as part of the US policy and strategic to punish leadership of a country it disagreed with on geopolitical matters. South Africa has already moved and scurried around to seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but so far the US has not listened. But as Rasool warned, there is no need to panic, South Africa needs to play its cards carefully and hope for the best over time.