Rasool's controversial exit: unpacking the diplomatic tensions between South Africa and the US

Debate on ambassador Ebrahim Rasool’s expulsion from the US is bound to continue into posterity. Perhaps more like the Jesse Owens moment at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games when he shattered a Hitlerian scheme to showcase Aryan superiority; or Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Games with their fists raised high during the rendering of the US anthem; or Muhammad Ali in rejecting conscription during the Vietnam War: “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger,” Ali said.  

There are so many dimensions to the events surrounding ambassador Rasool that it would be difficult to ventilate all of them in a week, a month or even a year. In future diplomatic training manuals far beyond South Africa, this will certainly feature as a useful case study. Besides diplomatic rights and responsibilities, it also raises the question about to whom protocol applies in relation to global power balances.  

Praise must be given to the South African media’s coverage of the saga, fulfilling the responsibility to inform and entertain. Largely, this has been about what happened, where and how, and talk-show banter about who would be the best replacement. 

But did the media meet its obligation to educate? Far from it.

This includes many analysts who have ventured opinions: ranging from suggestions that he was a bad choice from the start because he is a Muslim and already had a target on his back (given the ubiquity of the Zionist lobby in the US), to anger that South Africa had not acted in a similar manner when ambassador Reuben Brigety falsely accused the government of supplying arms to Russia in its war against Ukraine. Others have asked whether it was appropriate for the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) to invite him, and whether he should have ventured those opinions on a public platform.    

In other words, very little of the analysis has delved into the core issues that ambassador Rasool raised in his seminal contribution.

For a start, clarification of the character of the Mistra webinar is in order. The assumption that Rasool is a toddler who needed guidance on what and what not to say is not only empty sophistry, but a patronising superiority. According to some reports, ambassador Rasool had been articulating these views in other interactions with US audiences. The difference in this case is that Joel Pollak at Breitbart News (himself campaigning to be US ambassador in South Africa) selectively quoted from Rasool’s presentation, deliberately to incite the US administration. This confirms suspicions that this was a long time coming.

Now on some of the substantive issues…

There is more or less consensus in South Africa on the importance and mutually beneficial nature of relations between South Africa and the US, strategic issues that Rasool spent most of his input elaborating. He and other panellists emphasised the character and quality of exports to the US as the second-largest export destination, which include large proportions of manufactured goods, compared with China (the largest) which mainly consist of primary goods.

At the tactical level, he opined that it may not be opportune at this stage to dispatch envoys as the US administration is still filling critical and relevant posts.

What drew the ire of Pollak and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was Rasool’s analysis of the white supremacist dog whistles of the Trump election campaign and post-election “flooding of the zone”; and the root of this in changing US demographics. 

Thus was born the “race-baiting” epithet. Quite ironic, given the pronouncements of Rubio, his boss and the US embassy in South Africa. To quote Rubio: “I will NOT attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg. South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property.” A few days later, a presidential executive order was published, punishing South Africa for its nonexistent decision to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”. The US embassy in Pretoria, in its own words, referred to plans to “resettle disfavoured minorities in South Africa discriminated against because of their race as refugees”. Talk of race-baiting!

Critically, ambassador Rasool also spoke of the antidote to white supremacist policies and actions, the repercussions of which are being felt in Africa, Europe and elsewhere: a broad front of politicians and civil society in the US and around the world, in pursuit of “unity in diversity” (to quote the president of the European Union Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in Cape Town last week) and social justice.

South Africans must have confidence in the ability of the government to manage the situation and work at the relationship with the US. 

What grates deeply, though, is the commonality of talking points between some US leaders and South African white racists. For those who lived under the apartheid jackboot this is profoundly triggering. As some have pointed out, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) motto, in the South African context, has morphed into Make Apartheid Great Again!  

And so, as the government tries to mend relations, it will also need to consider a variety of scenarios, learning from history. The worst case may include interventions of the regime change variety. For instance, the proposal of AfriForum and Solidarity for targeted sanctions against ANC leaders has now found resonance in one mainstream US think tank, the Hudson Institute. 

In that extreme scenario, we may not experience the Chile-type 1973 coup against President Salvador Allende and the takeover of economic policy by the so-called Chicago Boys. But all efforts may be made to displace the ANC as a liberation movement, by so degrading the economy and flooding social media and other platforms that the ANC is rendered irrelevant, with its electoral support massively reduced. The Silicon Valley Boys (particularly those with some roots in South Africa) would then have a free hand. Beyond AfriForum and Solidarity, turncoats from within the liberation movement may also be found, to muddy the waters. 

This is just a scenario. As the President has counselled, there is no need to panic. 

However, to return to ambassador Rasool’s experience and those in our country who resort to sophistry or even celebrate his woes, it may be appropriate to remember the chilling words of Pastor Martin Niemöller about fascism:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

“Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.” DM

Joel Netshitenzhe is executive director of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra). He writes in his personal capacity.