South Africa appears to have little interest in making friends in Washington.
Pretoria’s dumpster fire diplomacy with the United States continues. In the span of a week, South Africa had its ambassador to the United States expelled, its largest city doubled down on naming a major street after a Palestinian terrorist, and its treasury allocated additional money for a lawfare campaign against an American ally.
In a March 14 address to a South African think tank, Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool accused the Trump administration of being “nativist” and “racist.” The embattled ambassador returned to Cape Town and again accused Trump of racism this Sunday. If Pretoria was trying to repair relations with Washington, it failed.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Rasool persona non grata shortly after the ambassador’s think tank speech and called him a “race-baiting politician who hates America” and President Trump. Rasool was already reportedly blacklisted by the administration and many in Washington. Perhaps he was trying to go out as a martyr.
It certainly didn’t endear him in Washington that he hosted senior Hamas leader Mohammed Nazzal in 2007 or that he previously compared Trump to the Islamic State in 2017.
But Rasool is just the tip of the iceberg for the South African political shipwreck.
South Africa’s recently passed land expropriation law drew President Trump’s ire in the form of a February 7 executive order cutting aid to the African country. The executive order also cited South Africa’s ties with Iran and its lawfare campaign against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as additional causes for concern.
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