The rumba dance may be an appropriate description of South African-US relations, with their intricate weave of slow-quick-quick step patterns and a rhythmic structure similar to the cha-cha-cha — with a blend of influences from Africa (by way of the Caribbean) and America. Or, rather than a rumba, more ominously, maybe we are now observing a rumble — a gang fight between two adolescent street gangs, like the one between the Sharks and the Jets that animates the musical “West Side Story”.
Or, instead, perhaps what we are seeing is a combination of rumba and rumble — simultaneously melding together an intricate dance and a street fight.
In this way, the hair-trigger decision by the Trump administration to declare South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, persona non grata is the most recent step in an increasingly problematic, awkward encounter and connections between the two nations. It is almost as if they are looking for things to argue about.
Before we get into the specifics of this ugly dance routine, we should be clear about what the phrase persona non grata (or as it is usually abbreviated, PNG) means. Under Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the receiving state may “at any time and without having to explain its decision” declare any member of a foreign diplomatic staff persona non grata.
Read more: ‘Persona non grata’ – US expels SA ambassador Ebrahim Rasool from Washington
Such a person considered to be unacceptable as a foreign diplomat in the receiving nation is recalled to their home nation. In the normal course of things, that person isn’t “frogmarched” to the nearest airport, but they are given explicit instructions to depart the host country within a very limited period — usually a few days.
If they are not recalled, the receiving state “may refuse to recognise the person concerned as a member of the mission”. A person can even be declared persona non grata before they have arrived in their country of assignment if circumstances warrant it. This might be if the presumptive diplomat is a known drug kingpin closely tied to the oligarchic, criminal syndicate of the family running things in their nation.
While protection of mission staff members from prosecution for violating civil and criminal laws — aka “diplomatic immunity” — is dependent on their respective ranks, under articles 41 and 42 of the Vienna Convention diplomats are bound to respect a host nation’s laws and regulations. No shooting of someone on New York City’s Fifth Avenue and getting away with it, as a certain US president once said he could do with impunity.
Accordingly, violations of the precepts of the Vienna Convention may lead to diplomatic staff members being declared persona non grata by the host nation. That sanction can also be used to expel diplomats who are suspected of serious criminal activities such as espionage or drug trafficking, described in the convention as “activities incompatible with diplomatic status”.
PNGing a foreign diplomat may also represent a symbolic indication of displeasure with the nation that assigned them to the host nation (or the way that diplomat described the host nation), as the current circumstances seem to be, rather than any accusations that the envoy was carrying out criminal activities. These “tit for tat” exchanges occur when countries involved in a rancorous dispute reciprocally expel each others’ diplomats — circumstances that occasionally occurred during the Cold War.
(I know of a US diplomat who was PNGed from Ireland some years ago for writing to friends that Ireland and its people were dull like potatoes, or words to that effect. Some nations fiercely guard their reputations and their culinary traditions…)
Then there have been reciprocal versions such as the tit-for-tat PNG actions between the US and Ecuador some years ago. In that case, Ecuador expelled the US ambassador because of an embarrassing leak of US diplomatic cables. In response, the US sent Ecuador’s diplomat packing back to Quito.
Rasool the latest speed bump
In the present circumstances, South Africa’s ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was told to leave the US almost immediately after his appearance — remotely — in a webinar organised by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) in Johannesburg, on the nature and future of the two nations’ bilateral relationship. Mistra is an independent South African think tank, but closely attuned to ANC thinking.
In his remarks, Rasool made an effort to paint the landscape that he, and by extension, South Africa, must relate to with the Trump administration and, importantly, in a political world very different from the pre-20 January 2025 one.
Following the State Department announcement, the organisers of the webinar said the “Mapungubwe Institute (Mistra) has noted the diplomatic developments between the US and SA since a webinar it hosted on 14 March 2025. Mistra is committed to freedom of expression and of intellectual discourse, and we do hope that these issues will be resolved in the interest of the peoples of both countries.”
The conference and Rasool’s words were not intended to precipitate a diplomatic incident. President Cyril Ramaphosa said he expected a “full report” this week from his ambassador on the events, but without immediately assigning blame, and voicing his hope for a positive relationship with South Africa’s second-largest trading partner.
Still, the Rasool incident has come on top of a series of tensions and speed bumps that began almost from the moment the Trump administration took office. Much of Rasool’s presentation echoed the kind of analysis broadly shared by many others about the Trump administration, and about US-South African relations more generally.
Moreover, while it was an analysis that would not have been out of place in an academic seminar in the US — Rasool’s repeated use of the word “supremacist” (with “white” implied as a predecessor word) seems to have been the trigger for an ultra-quick response from the Trump state department. Within a day after the seminar, they had declared Rasool persona non grata.
From Pollack to PNG
The State Department, in issuing its decision, said, “Ambassador Rasool’s recent comments regarding the President of the United States were deeply offensive and make it impossible for the United States Government to continue engaging with the Ambassador.”
It appears their rocket was triggered by the report on Rasool’s statements by the ultra-right wing Breitbart News. Breitbart’s reporter must have been up before the crack of dawn in the US to have watched that webinar and then quickly filed their story. It is important to note that Breitbart’s editor is Joel Pollak.
Many readers are likely familiar with his name as the self-promoted US ambassador-apparent to South Africa. Pollak was born in South Africa, and, over time, has moved from student activism to staff aide/speechwriter for Tony Leon, then on to increasingly right-wing activism, writing and commentary in the US. In an unprecedented way, he is campaigning to be nominated as the US ambassador to South Africa.
Read more: Ramaphosa assures SA shouldn’t have sleepless nights over US envoy expulsion
Rasool, meanwhile, while he garnered uncontroversial and generally positive notices in his previous tour as South Africa’s top diplomat in the US, this time around had stepped onto a very different landscape — one dominated by newly elected President Donald Trump, his administration’s Svengali and chainsaw wielder, Elon Musk, as well as a Republican majority in the House and the Senate.
Rasool’s critics dug up his previous Islamist connections in the US — as well as in South Africa — along with some of his public statements about Israel and its conduct towards Palestinians. There has been little love towards Rasool from the SA Jewish Board of Deputies.
By the time Rasool had overstepped with his direct, pointed criticism of the US president, he had few friends left in high places to come to his rhetorical rescue, but a growing list of detractors. Breitbart’s report was the trigger to a process that ended his assignment in the US by touching some of the most sensitive nerves of the Trump administration.
In more normal circumstances, what should have happened is rather different. Senior officers in the US State Department should have obtained a full transcript of the ambassador’s presentation, then summoned him to the department for a serious talking-to, including an insistence that he explain what he thought he was doing in that speech and why he thought it was appropriate for a diplomat accredited to the US to be voicing personal criticism of the incumbent president in a public forum.
After such a reprimand, they would have let him stew a bit while the South African government and the ambassador considered whether his continued tenure was on a serious downhill slope — or if it was repairable.
Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration did not follow such a path. Instead, it reacted to the Breitbart report about Rasool’s remarks and decided to PNG him before the week was out.
At this point, it may be useful to compare Rasool’s treatment to the way the US ambassador Reuben Brigety was treated after publicly accusing the South African government of secretly providing Russia with military materiel on the Russian freighter the Lady R to aid Russia’s war effort against Ukraine.
Despite local public outrage from various quarters, including predictable howling about an abuse of diplomatic protocol, Brigety was summoned to Dirco offices for a talking-to. He offered a kind of apology, and the South African government chose not to declare him persona non grata. The government investigated the Lady R allegations and declared there had been no surreptitious occurrences, although the report remains classified. Everybody ultimately agreed to move on and Brigety finished out his assignment.
A long-simmering campaign
Looked at more broadly, the PNGing of South Africa’s ambassador from the US is simply the most recent difficult moment in a series of diplomatic and other missteps reaching back years. By contrast, during the early years of SA’s democratic transition, there seemed to be a sense of common cause between the two nations.
Back in the mid-1990s, a high-level bilateral commission was set up — the Mbeki-Gore Commission — with yearly consultations and joint committees to focus on a wide range of initiatives and projects in many areas of public policy.
Eventually, though, official enthusiasm cooled, due in part to divergent ideas and policies about HIV/Aids treatment and prevention into and during the Mbeki presidency, disagreements about South Africa’s relationship with figures like Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and over the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, a growing divergence in voting records at the UN, and South Africa’s increasing enchantment with the BRICS grouping as a way of offsetting Western economic heft and influence.
Nonetheless, despite the gradual fading or hardening in parts of the formal government relationship, a broad, bi-national, cooperative relationship under the Pepfar programme dealing with HIV/Aids came into action in the post-Mbeki years, as well as continuing growth in trade and investment, and the expansion of personal, academic and cultural exchanges. The question of South Africa’s eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) of the US has come under increasing scrutiny in Congress.
Read more: Agoa in peril — a litmus test for SA’s ability to adapt to a shifting world order
The past several years have led to increased US criticism of South Africa’s embrace of Russia, China and Iran, as well as its vigorous engagement at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
By the time Trump became president, a long-simmering campaign that included appearances on US television networks by representatives from AfriForum designed to provoke US action against a claimed campaign against Afrikaner farmers became even more visible, once a hotly debated expropriation of land Bill became law. One of Trump’s first acts, then, was announcing a special refugee status for white farmers (or Afrikaners, eligibility status remains murky) to be admitted into the US on an expeditious basis.
Read more: As Trump dismantles US norms and institutions, Afrikaner refugee process remains unclear
Meanwhile, while it was not limited to South Africa, the Trump administration’s decision to terminate most foreign assistance programmes abroad hit South Africa’s health sector particularly hard. US foreign assistance was close to 20% of spending on HIV/Aids programmes, causing a negative ripple effect throughout the health sector and among NGOs administering much of the programme.
The new US secretary of state declined to participate in the foreign ministers’ meeting of the G20 forum in Johannesburg, decrying the focus of the meeting on policies inimical to the US government such as diversity and climate. (Sustainability was presumably okay, though.) Going forward, this is going to be awkward, since the US is supposed to assume the chairmanship of the G20 after a handoff in November.
Summing up the animus towards South Africa by the current administration and looking beyond the disagreement over South Africa’s pursuit of a judgment at the ICJ, Washington Post commentator Ishaan Tharoor wrote on 17 March:
“In Trumpworld, the enmity goes deeper. Online fear-mongering among white nationalists has made its way into Trump’s talking points, with the president highlighting the supposed oppression of White farmers — principally ethnic Afrikaners, or the descendants of 17th-century Dutch colonists — and the perceived risk of violence they face, as well as the potential expropriation of their lands. Elon Musk, the South African-born tech oligarch working closely with Trump, has repeatedly invoked the far-right slogan of ‘White genocide’ in the country, claims that a South African court recently declared were ‘not real.’”
Going forward
Going forward, what are some of the likely scenarios in the relationship between the two nations? First, of course, is for the two nations to find ways to heal the diplomatic wounds.
The South African government will want to find someone who can more easily manoeuvre his or her way through the thickets of Washington, DC, perhaps in the manner of previous top diplomats like ambassadors Harry Schwarz, Franklin Sonn or Barbara Masekela. The first two presided over the relationship at the end of apartheid and the beginning of the new era, while the latter served at what was probably the high-water mark of friendly ties. (Here’s an unsolicited suggestion, what about Trevor Manuel — if he would take the job and the challenge?)
At the same time, the US should move carefully in identifying someone as their ambassador who is not going to be trading on a reputation for public pugnacity towards the Pretoria government such as Joel Pollak has. Appointees like that make for great headlines but are not so good for diplomacy when the waters are already less than calm.
Or, perhaps, the US can simply leave the position open for a while and allow a career officer to take responsibility in the position of chargé d’affaires in the interim.
Tharoor went on to note, “Some bemused onlookers think Trump and his allies are doing this for nativist supporters at home.”
He quoted Max du Preez’s comments in The New York Times. “It plays into the fears of white people in America and elsewhere: ‘We whites are threatened,’” said Du Preez.
“They’re playing on the thing of the White Christian civilization being threatened,” Du Preez added. “And that has a lot of appeal among the evangelicals and others in the United States.”
Tharoor added, “Patrick Gaspard, a former U.S. ambassador to South Africa, lamented the breakdown in the relationship and pointed to how the secretary of state was, as a political rival, far more critical of Trump than South Africa’s expelled ambassador. ‘We should note that Marco Rubio himself said far worse things about Donald Trump in the past than anything said by Ambassador Rasool,’ Gaspard posted on social media. ‘Let’s be real about what these people are up to with their obsessive targeting of South Africa and their performance of grievance.’ ”
Perhaps in the interest of finding a way beyond this head-butting, the two governments can begin discussions on some kind of new bilateral forum, one without the fanfare and public pomp that characterised the previous one, but where real issues can be assigned to working parties to begin hammering out solutions, or at least compromises on differing views. There will be disagreements that can’t be eliminated, not least of which is a serious one over how the two governments view the Israel-Gaza challenge, but, astonishingly, the two countries now seem somewhat closer in their views on the Ukraine invasion than ever before.
One other challenge, among many, is a local administrative one. The Trump administration appears to be on course to lower the diplomatic profile of the US globally.It will probably close consulates in a number of countries and even consolidate some embassies on the African continent to cover more than one country — as some other nations do already.
If the Johannesburg City Council goes ahead with renaming the current US consulate-general’s street address from Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive in honour of the former airplane hijacker, it is reasonable to speculate that the US will be particularly uncomfortable with that name as their facility’s street address.
In line with lowering its diplomatic profile, the US might simply transfer all of the consulate’s functions to Pretoria and reconfigure the now-less-busy USAID offices in Brooklyn, Pretoria, as its location instead. That would be a mistake, but then so would the renaming. Maybe they could just readjust their street address to 1776 Rivonia Road?
No matter how circumspect and interested in improving the relationship Ramaphosa is, in line with his comments after the Rasool decision; with Trump in Washington, things will be unpredictable and it’s going to be a bumpy ride diplomatically. But the two nations need to find a way to get along for the benefit of their citizens and their interests beyond diplomatic chest-beating. DM