# US declares South African envoy persona non grata after Trump criticism row
Event date: 2025-03-14. The United States has escalated tensions with South Africa by declaring Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool persona non grata, a move the South African presidency called regrettable and said it would handle through diplomatic channels.
According to the evidence packet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on social media that Rasool was “no longer welcome” in the United States and accused him of being a race-baiting politician who hates America and the president. Rubio tied the decision to remarks Rasool had made in a cited media report about Donald Trump’s political appeal and what the envoy described as a “supremacist instinct” and “white victimhood.”
The packet says South Africa’s presidency responded by calling the decision regrettable and urging calm and diplomatic decorum. The foreign ministry’s spokesperson, Chrispin Phiri, said the government would engage through diplomatic channels. That response suggests Pretoria wants to contain the fallout, even as the expulsion lands as a public rebuke.
Rasool had only recently returned to his post in January, making the expulsion especially abrupt. The source material also notes that he had been denied some routine access to US State Department and Republican officials since Trump’s inauguration, indicating that the deterioration in relations was already underway before the formal declaration.
The timing matters. The packet frames the move as part of a broader US policy shift toward South Africa, which has supported Palestinian rights and backed the International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. The source does not say that issue alone drove the expulsion, but it places the ambassador’s removal in a wider diplomatic context.
The article should avoid overstating what has been formally announced. The evidence packet confirms the persona non grata designation and the public response from South Africa. It does not provide a legal memo or a detailed State Department explanation. It also does not indicate whether the envoy has already left the country. What is clear is that the United States has used one of diplomacy’s strongest rebukes against a sitting ambassador.
For South Africa, the immediate task is managing the relationship without allowing a single expulsion to freeze broader contact. For Washington, the move communicates that criticism of the president can carry direct diplomatic consequences. The episode now joins a growing list of flashpoints between the Trump administration and governments abroad that have objected to its policies or rhetoric.
