Former ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, returned home on Sunday "with no regrets", as scores of supporters welcomed him and his wife, Rosieda, with song and dance at Cape Town International Airport.
“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets," he said.
Rasool was expelled from the US following remarks made during a webinar held by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) under the theme "Implications of changes in US administrations for SA and Africa".
Rasool previously served as SA ambassador to the US during the Barack Obama administration between 2010 and 2015.
He was re-appointed in January 2025, as ambassador during the Joe Biden and then Donald Trump administration.
Rasool said his remarks were to South African intelligentsia, intellectuals, political leaders and others to alert them to a change of tradition in the US, and that the old way of doing business with the US was not going to work.
During the Mistra webinar, Rasool said: “The supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the US, 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 US in which the voting electorate in the US is projected to become 48% white."
On Sunday, while addressing the media in Cape Town, he said: “It is not the US of Obama, it is not the US of Clinton, it is a different US and therefore our language must change.
"Not only to transactionality but also a language that can penetrate a group that has clearly identified a fringe white community in South Africa as their constituency surrounded by a white diaspora in the White House.
“That is what we are up against… and so there is nothing I will say there that I would not say elsewhere, so I would stand by my analysis because we were analysing a political phenomenon, not a personality, not a nation and not even a government, so I stand by that,” Rasool said.
Despite the friction caused by his removal and the difference in stances on certain issues, Rasool remained resolute in the idea that South Africa should continue efforts to rescue the relationship with the US.
“We must reset the relationship with America because our relationship with America over 50 years has not always been with the White House.
"It has sometimes been with Congress and it has always been with the people of the United States of America.
“We have this relationship that we must reset, and we must rebuild.
"We must hope that President Cyril Ramaphosa will be able to pick up where we left off, but we cannot have a simplistic idea that when we say there must be an ambassador, that you must put a white ambassador for a white president in the United States. We know it's not right.”
When asked about attempts made to make contact with the White House, Rasool explained part of the design of the "persona non-grata" was to make sure that the “access we got would not be used, because there is a different agenda that wants to prioritise white suffering over black needs in South Africa”.
When asked what comes next, and what role he will next play, he said, it is too early to make decisions of that nature".
"You must first recover from your previous job before you look for another job. We will think about it, we will pray on it, we will consult on it and then we will decide what to do next.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa will not rush the process of appointing a new ambassador to the US amid escalating tensions between Pretoria and Washington DC, according to his spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya.
Magwenya said the Ramaphosa will “apply his mind” and “it does not help for him to rush the process”.
"Equally, the US has not appointed an ambassador yet, but we've been able at various levels of the government to continue to have engagements with diplomats from the US Embassy," Magwenya said.
“Similarly, in our case, we will continue to have engagements with the Trump administration without an ambassador. It's not a process that the President wants to rush.
“It's a process that he wants to carefully apply his mind on against the prevailing conditions as well as against the opportunities that we see further down the line for an improved relationship with the Trump administration,” he said.
Meanwhile, speaking at the Sol Plaatje University’s Human Rights Day dialogue on Friday in Kimberley, Northern Cape, Nelson Mandela Foundation chairperson and former International Relations and Cooperation minister Naledi Pandor urged the South African populace to speak far more clearly and really say to the US “we are a country seeking to transform after horrible decades of racial oppression”.
@capeargus_news Former South African Ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool arrived at Cape Town International Airport on Sunday. Last week, Washington’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio booted Rasool, declaring him persona non grata following his comments made in a webinar, criticising the Trump administration. 🎥@Ayanda ♬ News Theme - TATANX
“We will set out our process of transformation on our own terms and we cannot be directed by someone else as to how to address the subject of redress,” she said.
Professor Kedibone Phago, director of the North West University’s School of Government Studies, said it was important that South Africa understands its own interests and positions on various global issues.
“This means appointing an ambassador would require someone with the ability to represent such interests regardless of whether such interests are contrary to those of US interests. It is the role of the ambassador to maintain diplomatic channels in handling bilateral relations with the US,” he said.
Phago said South Africa is a country that is diverse in every sense of the word and does not need to apologise about its makeup.
“It is our reality that we have embraced and need to celebrate it. We usually find this as a strength and need to use it to our advantage. This means even in the appointment of ambassadors, we should maintain a diversity of representatives to remain true to our constitutional values and principles,” he said.
Cape Argus