Remarks by South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, about President Donald Trump were ‘unacceptable’, a State Department spokesperson told reporters on Monday after Washington last week expelled the envoy.
A major party in South Sudan’s coalition government said on Tuesday it had suspended its role in a key element of a 2018 peace deal as relations between its leader, Riek Machar, and President Salva Kiir deteriorate amid clashes and arrests.
The ratings agency Moody’s expects South Africa’s coalition government to reach a compromise that allows the country’s deadlocked Budget to pass with its focus on fiscal consolidation intact.
US says Rasool’s remarks were ‘unacceptable’
Remarks by South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, about President Donald Trump were “unacceptable,” a State Department spokesperson told reporters on Monday after Washington last week decided to expel the envoy.
Ties between the two countries have slumped since Trump cut US financial aid to South Africa, citing disapproval of its land policy and its genocide case against Washington’s ally Israel at the International Court of Justice.
The expulsion of Rasool following an article that quoted him as saying Trump was leading a supremacist movement, was the last straw.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday in a post on X that he was expelling Rasool, calling him a “race-baiting politician” who hates Trump, and reposting the article from the right-wing website Breitbart.
“These remarks were unacceptable to the United States, not just to the president, but to every American,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, speaking at a daily briefing, told reporters.
“At the very least, what we should expect is a standard of some respect — basic, low-level respect — if you're in a position that is going to help facilitate any kind of diplomatic relationship with another country.”
She added that Rasool’s privileges as ambassador expired on Monday and he must leave the country by Friday.
South Africa’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Breitbart article or Bruce’s comments.
South Africa previously called the expulsion regrettable in statements from the Presidency and international relations department, but said it remained committed to building mutually beneficial relations.
Asked by reporters whether other ambassadors to the US could criticise Trump without fear of being expelled, Bruce said: “You want people in each embassy who can actually facilitate a relationship.”
Rasool presented his credentials to then-President Joe Biden on 13 January, a week before Trump took office, according to the embassy's website. It was his second stint in Washington.
Bruce also said the Trump administration was conducting a serious review of Washington’s South Africa policy, citing South Africa’s land policy, its growing ties with countries like Russia and Iran and “aggressive positions” toward the US and allies, including accusing Israel of genocide.
Trump has said, without citing evidence, that South Africa is confiscating land and that “certain classes of people” were being treated very badly.
South Sudan party partially withdraws from peace process
A major party in South Sudan’s coalition government said on Tuesday it had suspended its role in a key element of a 2018 peace deal as relations between its leader, Riek Machar, and President Salva Kiir deteriorate amid clashes and arrests.
The agreement ended a five-year war between forces loyal to Kiir and his rival Machar, who now serves as first vice-president leading the SPLM-IO party. But the two men have a fractious relationship, which has worsened in recent weeks following clashes in the country’s east.
Earlier this month security forces rounded up several SPLM-IO officials, including the petroleum minister and the deputy head of the army, after the White Army ethnic militia forced troops to withdraw from the town of Nasir near the Ethiopian border.
The government has accused the SPLM-IO of links with the White Army, which mostly comprises armed ethnic Nuer youths who fought alongside Machar's forces in the 2013-2018 war against predominantly ethnic Dinka troops loyal to Kiir. The party denies the allegations.
Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, the deputy chairperson of the SPLM-IO, said on Tuesday the party would not participate in security arrangements tied to the peace process until the detained officials were released.
“The ongoing political witch-hunts continue to threaten the very essence and the existence of the [peace deal],” said Pierino.
The fighting around Nasir in Upper Nile state has displaced 50,000 people since late February, of which 10,000 have fled to Ethiopia, according to Anita Kiki Gbeho, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan.
South Sudan’s United Nations peacekeeping chief, Nicholas Haysom, said he was concerned the country was “on the brink of relapse into civil war”.
“With the proliferation of mis/disinformation in the public domain, hate speech is now rampant, raising concerns that the conflict could assume an ethnic dimension,” he said in a speech to the African Union.
Analysts say the war in neighbouring Sudan has also spurred the breakdown of the peace process, with South Sudan’s oil revenues suspended, escalating regional tensions and arms flooding across the border.
“Already we are seeing the initial stages of spillover fighting in Upper Nile from the Sudan war. It will be difficult to prevent those tensions from spreading to [the capital] Juba,” said Alan Boswell from the International Crisis Group.
Moody’s expects SA government to reach Budget compromise
The ratings agency Moody’s expects South Africa’s coalition government to reach a compromise that allows the country’s deadlocked Budget to pass with its focus on fiscal consolidation intact.
“Our baseline is for the GNU [Government of National Unity] to reach a compromise, leading to an orderly approval of the Budget,” said Moody’s in an issuer comment dated 17 March.
“Continued friction within the GNU means there may still be some changes to fiscal measures before Parliament approves the Budget, but we expect the Budget’s overall focus on fiscal consolidation to remain.”
The Budget was postponed last month because of disagreements in the ruling coalition over a contentious plan to raise value-added tax (VAT), before Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana presented a revised version in Parliament last week.
Most big parliamentary parties publicly rejected the amended Budget, despite it scaling back the size of the proposed VAT hike, and negotiations are taking place to try to break the impasse.
The revised Budget aimed for public debt to peak in the fiscal year that starts on 1 April, a target Moody’s predicted would remain in place in the version eventually passed by Parliament.
Strike on market in north Mali kills 18
An army air strike at a market in Mali’s northern Timbuktu region on Sunday killed at least 18 people and injured seven, said a local rights group, while the army said it was targeting terrorists.
The Collective for the Defence of the Rights of the Azawad People, which is linked to separatist Tuareg rebels, said Malian armed forces bombed a weekly market 50km north of the city of Lerneb.
Mali’s army said on Monday it had launched air strikes against what it called terrorist activity in the same area cited by the rights group. It said in a statement on X that the strikes had “neutralised” at least 11 terrorists.
North Mali is rife with militant activity linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
The Tuaregs, an ethnic group who inhabit the Sahara region including northern Mali, are fighting for an independent homeland.
They launched an insurgency against Mali's government in 2012, but the rebellion was later hijacked by Islamist groups, setting off a violent insurgency that has since spread across West Africa’s Sahel region and beyond.
In July last year, Tuareg rebels attacked a convoy of Malian soldiers and mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group in the far north of the country, near the town of Tinzaouaten close to the border with Algeria. Dozens of Russian and Malian soldiers were killed in the attack, said the rebels.
It is not uncommon for Mali, which has been under military rule since a 2020 coup, to carry out air strikes on insurgent targets in the north of the country.
At least 21 people, including 11 children, were killed by drone strikes on Tinzaouaten in August, said Tuareg rebels. In October, a drone strike at a fair in Timbuktu region killed at least eight people, including children.
Somali militants target presidential convoy in bomb attack
Al-Shabaab militants targeted Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in a bomb attack on his motorcade as it was travelling through the capital Mogadishu on Tuesday, said the Islamist group.
Two senior government and military officials told Reuters that Mohamud was safe following the attack, and presidential adviser Zakariye Hussein wrote in a post on X that he was “good and well on his way to the front lines”.
Soldiers and residents who witnessed the attack confirmed that the president’s convoy had been hit. A Reuters journalist at the scene saw the bodies of four people killed in the assault near the presidential palace.
“Our fighters targeted a convoy of vehicles carrying Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as they were leaving the presidential palace and heading to the airport,” said al-Shabaab in a statement posted on the al Qaeda-linked group’s Telegram channel.
While al-Shabaab regularly carries out attacks in Somalia as part of its decadeslong campaign to topple the government, Tuesday’s attack was the first to directly target Mohamud since 2014, during his first term in office, when they bombed a hotel where he was speaking.
Hours after the attack on Tuesday, state media showed images of the president in the Adan Yabal district of Somalia’s Middle Shabelle region, where government forces are battling a three-week-old al-Shabaab offensive.
Drought reduces Ivory Coast’s mid-crop cocoa output
Ivory Coast’s cocoa mid-crop output was expected to drop by about 40% this season after an unusually long dry season and limited, patchy rainfall hit crops in the main production regions, said exporters and pod counters.
Farmers have said rains were scattered and irregular in the West African country and proper downpours were needed to boost production and ensure bean quality during the mid-crop season, which begins on 1 April and ends on 30 September.
Five pod counters and five exporters told Reuters they expected farmers to harvest between 280,000 and 300,000 tonnes of cocoa due to the dry spell, which deteriorates beans’ size and quality.
Last season, Ivory Coast harvested 500,000 tonnes of cocoa, according to data from the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC). Over the last 10 years, the country has produced an average of 550,000 tonnes per year, according to the cocoa regulator and some exporters.
“What has caused this significant drop in production is the long period of drought from November until now. It’s unusual and the consequences are catastrophic,” one exporter told Reuters. DM