South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, has been expelled from Washington after his comments in a webinar hosted by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) on Friday, March 14.

Rasool was invited to speak about how South Africa will navigate US relations following the dramatic changes in that country’s administration, when he commented that Donald Trump was ”mobilizing supremacism.”

“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.”

Rasool also spoke about Elon Musk’s role and influence in US and global politics:

“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. And 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.”

The reaction was swift. On Friday night, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that Rasool is ”no longer welcome in our great country.”

Adding a link to the right-wing media outlet, Breitbart, which covered the webinar, Rubio wrote:

“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 Presidency, in a very short statement, has said that Rasool’s expulsion is ”regrettable.”

“The Presidency urges all relevant and impacted stakeholders to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter. South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States of America.”

During the webinar, Rasool also made some very sensible comments, including that while Trump’s policies seem to be of the shock and awe variety, South Africa should stay calm and wait for the administration to settle.

He said that South Africa needed to take a very nuanced line in navigating the current choppy waters.