Rubio boots South African ambassador from US: 'persona non grata'

On Thursday, South African Ambassador Embrahim Rasool addressed the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg while explaining Trump's opposition to his country's expropriation law and its anti-Israel stances. 

He said Trump's Make America Great Again movement was a White supremacist response to demographic changes in the U.S.

"What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency, at home, and, I think I've illustrated, abroad as well," he said. "So in terms of that, the supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, 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 USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white."

Rubio, in a post on X, blasted Rasool over his remarks. 

Trump has criticized South Africa over a land expropriation law that allows the government to make land seizures without compensation. In February, Trump issued an executive order penalizing South Africa.

"In shocking disregard of its citizens' rights, the Republic of South Africa recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024, to enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation," the order states. 

"It is the policy of the United States that, as long as South Africa continues these unjust and immoral practices that harm our Nation: (a) the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa; and (b) the United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation."

The South African government has claimed Whites of all backgrounds, not just Afrikaners, still own approximately 70% of South Africa's land. The government is on record saying the Expropriation Act will only be used to take land needed for public purposes - such as for a new school - from people of any color when the owner refuses to sell, and even then there would be "fair and equitable compensation."