International relations department concerned by US calls for policy change in SA – The Mail & Guardian

US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Ebrahim Rasool, who became South Africa’s envoy to Washington in December, had fallen short of the basic standards of respect demanded of a diplomat.

Remarks by the US State Department in the wake of the expulsion of South Africa’s ambassador to Washington reaffirmed ties between the two countries but also read, concerningly, as a wish to dictate domestic policy, the international relations ministry has said.

“We are concerned that the comments could suggest that the US wants to interfere in SA’s sovereign, national policy,” ministerial spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told the Mail & Guardian. “This is a matter which we will pursue in our engagement with our US counterparts.”

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Ebrahim Rasool, who became South Africa’s envoy to Washington in December, had fallen short of the basic standards of respect demanded of a diplomat.

“We deserve better. We’ve had a decent level of diplomacy with South Africa. There are some challenges but you want people in each embassy who can actually facilitate a relationship.”

Phiri said this acknowledged  the relevance of the relationship between the two countries, a point President Cyril Ramaphosa has underscored since the government learnt, initially via a social media post by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that Rasool had been declared persona non grata by Washington.

“This reflects what we’ve been saying — that the bilateral relationship with the US is one of strategic importance to both countries,” Phiri said.

Bruce qualified Rasool’s comments on a webinar, that the actions of the Trump administration were driven by white supremacist tendencies, as offensive not only to the government but to the American people.

“They were pretty much obscene when it came to the nature of… what was alleged, and so that is, at the very least, what we should expect — a standard of basic low-level respect, if you are in a position that is going to help facilitate” diplomatic engagement, she told a media briefing.

Asked about Washington’s concerns regarding South Africa, Bruce listed these as including “an aggressive position towards the US and its allies”, its formal accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and the Expropriation Act.

“The unjust land expropriation law, as well as its growing relationship with countries like Russia and Iran, that is what prompted the serious review of our South Africa policy.”

“The point is to encourage a change,” she said. “It is the nature of changing policy.”

President Donald Trump used all of the above as a rationale for suspending all aid to South Africa in an executive order signed on 7 February. But it is the narrative of Afrikaner persecution to which he has repeatedly returned.

In a post on Truth Social earlier this month, he wrote (sic):  “South Africa is being terrible, plus to long time farmers in the country. They are confiscating their LAND and FARMS, and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT.”

Rasool, in conversation with the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra), a think-tank led by former government strategist Joel Netshitenze, cast the fixation on a white minority as an effort to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” in America and around the world. 

He said the Trump administration’s actions, that seemed “instinctive, nativist, racist”, were perhaps intended to disrupt incumbency in a country with shifting demographics.

“The supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA … 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 located Trump’s rush to declare Afrikaners victims of racial discrimination and offer the minority special refugee status in efforts to “export the revolution”, also evidenced by Elon Musk’s support for the far right in Germany.

Netshitenze noted this week that the ambassador’s analysis was not novel but, in this instance, had been picked up and selectively quoted by Breitbart editor Joel Pollak “deliberately to incite the US administration”. He added that South Africa had to countenance several scenarios in its changing relationship with the US, the worst being “interventions of the regime-change variety”.

Rubio was seemingly responding to Pollak when he tweeted: “Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS (Trump). We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”

Pollak is conducting a searingly undiplomatic campaign to become the next US ambassador to South Africa, waged in large part in tweets condemning the country’s domestic and foreign policy. 

“I don’t ‘see myself’ as having that job (yet), but I guarantee that anyone whom President Trump nominates will follow Trump’s policies,” he posted on Wednesday. “There’s no sense in holding out for someone more pliable, or a return to the policy status quo ante. Trump won. You’ll get Trump’s ambassador.”

Days before Rasool’s expulsion President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office confirmed he intended to send a delegation to Washington to propose a trade pact as a way of resetting the bilateral relationship. 

The mission, his spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said, would not be an endeavour to explain South African policies, although envoys would be happy to engage on issues that require clarification.

He has qualified Rasool’s expulsion as “regrettable” and said Pretoria would take lessons from what had transpired. Both he and Phiri swiftly made clear there would be no diplomatic retaliation from South Africa.

International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola is expected to hand Ramaphosa a shortlist of candidates to replace Rasool soon. Reports have suggested that Andries Nel, deputy cooperative governance minister, is on the list, but the government dismissed this as a whispering campaign.