Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool’s speech that made him ‘no longer welcome’ in the US

Ebrahim Rasool, the South African ambassador to the United States. (Via Wikimedia. DoD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo (Released) - Cropped from File:Leon Panetta, Ebrahim Rassol and Imam Talib Shareef at the Pentagon, July 25, 2012.jpg, original source Flickr: 120725-D-BW835-487, public domain)

The South African ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, is no longer welcome in the US, several news publications reported on Saturday.

The Guardian states:

“South Africa’s ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” [US Secretary of State Marco] Rubio posted on X on Friday.

Rubio accused ambassador Ebrahim Rasool of being “a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS”, referring to Trump by his White House X account handle. “We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered persona non grata.”

Rubio’s reaction is apparently because of a report on the US news site Breitbart that reported a speech by Rasool in which he stated that whites will soon be less than half the population in the US.

Rasool’s speech was delivered at a webinar hosted by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA).

Here is the YouTube video of the speech:

We have edited and cleaned up, as best we can, the YouTube transcript of Rasool’s speech so that it is easily read. We’ve removed some bits that are unclear and the salutations at the end of the speech. We have done our best not to change the meaning of what Rasool said. We have put the part that is said to have angered Rubio in bold. Here it is:

Ebrahim Rasool’s speech to MISTRA, 14 March 2025

Thank you very much Dr Aba Omar and to MISTRA and my fellow panelists and to everyone who is for some or other reason not productively employed and filling up your audience base.

I want to say that I’ve got fairly limited time to get through quite a lot So I’m going to cut out a lot of elegance. I may get misunderstood in the process but I’m asking you to give me the benefit of the doubt and then to voice your questions afterwards.

But I want to start with an issue of perspective because how South Africa responds to this current relationship with the USA is going to demand quite a lot of perspective from us. So the first perspective I want to share is the idea that foreign policy like other policies is like a telescope. It has two lenses A lens of your values and a lens of your interests And often a country makes its policies based on what lens it keeps against its eye and then views the other lens through that.

I think South Africa has by and large held the lens of values to its eye and then viewed its interest and calibrated its interest through that lens. I think that there are definitely countries who invert the telescope and put their interest against their eyes and then calibrate their values.

So that’s the first perspective I think that we must keep in mind as we navigate this relationship. And so if we understand that our values are the fundamental beliefs that shape our understanding of what is right what is important and what is desirable whereas our interests are those matters that are important and necessary to bring good and benefit to our society then I think we have something that we work with.

And in fact I would recommend that some of us get hold of this publication that is the framework document of South Africa’s national interests because this is going to be an absolutely crucial guide for us during these very turbulent moments that we are navigating between our values and our interests.

And if we accept as this framework document says that national interests are those interests that are based on strategic ones where our goals and objectives that are needed for our nation’s economy and security well-being, that it would consist by and large of matters for example of defence that protect our nation, matters of economy that ensure the well-being of our nation, matters of the world order, interests in which we need a global system that facilitates our mutual protection and well-being with other countries and that we also have ideological interest to advance the values for universal good. Now if we accept those things as the perspectives of departure and the lenses literally and figuratively through which we view things then maybe as we go through this conversation we can begin to make sense of our navigational tasks.

So the second broad issue that I want to raise is what is this current moment in the US political life? I think in doing this it is going to be useful for us to recognize the many continuities in the Trump administration that are inherited from the Biden administration. And so for example it was Biden that started putting pressure under his regime on AGOA and South Africa as a result of some of our geopolitical stances.

It’s a continuity from the Biden administration where the resistance to the emerging multipolarity in the world started to be articulated. And it is from the Biden administration that we saw the very frenetic attempts to maintain US ideological hegemony particularly in the way in which it armed for example Ukraine and Israel.

I want to say that we mustn’t miss, through an obsession with Donald Trump, the continuities from the Biden administration.

But there are significant discontinuities I think that we must also understand from the Trump administration. And very clearly in the discontinuities there is a disrespect for the institutional base of the current hegemonic order.

We see that in the way in which the Russian negotiations are being conducted that has very little of a healthy disrespect for NATO and the sense about whether the United Nations is as important and the bypassing of monies from the US from the World Bank, IMF etc.

It’s also in our interest to watch whether that disrespect will persist and be sustained on the issue of the G20 especially because we need to hand over from South Africa to the US the presidency of the G20.

The second discontinuity is almost that I think what Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilising a supremacism against the incumbency at home and I think I’ve illustrated abroad as well. So in terms of that supremacist assault on incumbency we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA 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 is projected to become 48% white and that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon. [our emphasis, because this is the paragraph that is said to have angered Rubio]

And so that needs to be factored in, so that we understand some of the things that we think are instinctive racist things. I think that there’s data that for example would support that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement etc.

There is also an export of the revolution. It’s no accident that that Elon Musk has involved himself in UK politics and elevated Nigel Farage and the Reform movement. In much the same way that it was instructive that on his way to the Munich security summit Vice-President Vance addressed the AFD to strengthen them in their election campaign.

And that begins to say what was the role then of Afrikaners in that whole makeup? And very clearly it’s to project white victimhood as a dog whistle, that there is a global movement that is beginning to envelop embattled white communities or apparently embattled white communities. It may not be true. It may not make sense but that is the dog whistle that is being heard in a global white base.

So I think we need to understand all of that.

Another discontinuity: It’s almost that they are pitting a supremacist insurgency against the incumbency and therefore we need to rethink our old categories of rationalization. Because in that category there are mainstream Republicans like a Mitt Romney and so forth that are seen as part of the incumbency, that are also embattled. And so it’s a intra-party insurgency as well as a global insurgency and a national one in the USA.

So I think we’ve got to get out of categories of thinking that are falling by the wayside. It’s forcing critical transitions in the world: this idea of undermining incumbency, it’s firing and forcing transitions from a system where the incumbents violated rules and disregarded rules to one where there are minimal to no rules and conventions that are at play at home or abroad. It’s a transition from soft impunity to hard impunity, in your face impunity. It’s a transition from rules-based duress to punitive coercion, naked punitive coercion, as the currency of exchange. And it’s a way to deal with emerging multilateralism and shifting for example from a focus on BRICS, with which the Trump and Biden administrations were very obsessed as the locus of the of the multilateral movement emerging, to Trump being an equal opportunity engager, using power over the whole world, using economic power particularly. So I think that’s what we are able to to discern from this side.

So the third issue that I then want to raise is what is this power what is this power that is being exercised and I think the power exercised is of the shock and awe variety. One of the South Africans in the inner circle of MAGA, Joel Pollak, speaks about the 200 executive orders that must be prosecuted within the first 100 days. This is the shock and awe that is being exercised across the USA. We’ve seen DOGE at work.

We’ve seen the borders, we’ve seen the attack on DEI and Wokeism and we’ve seen social cuts in the USA.

At a global level we all know about the stopping of aid. The multilateral financing system is being brought down, through for example anything that sounds like climate. [UNCLEAR] Trade and tariffs are dominating the agenda.

South Africa is not unique in all that but we fit into that because we are the historical antidote to supremacism, the success story of it. Our GNU is underappreciated in South Africa. But our GNU is seen as the second miracle of the democratic era in South Africa, that we accepted the defeat, that the ANC did so and formed the government of national unity etc.

So what are the strategic dilemmas and choices that I think we face? I think we have what is called the hot button issues: Israel and the ICJ, the Afrikaner issues, BRICS and dollarisation, China and Taiwan, and the allegation of Iran funding. And the Russia-Ukraine thing is receding on that.

And then there’s the bread and butter economics like the aid budgets that slashed 8-billion from South Africa. At the very least the tariffs and trade that I think we’re being threatened with AGOA comes into that very quickly.

And then the question is what are the interventions that I think we are looking at from the US?

Again in summary, inelegant, form let me mention six quick ones:

The first thing is stay calm and don’t panic. I know there’s a lot of panic being engendered because they see delegations coming to the US and saying when is the president sending his envoys? I think we’ve got to let the push back and the walk-back mature in the USA and see what the town hall meetings are doing to next year’s electoral projections because that may do half the work that we think some of our envoys can be doing and we do it too early. We [risk] giving a distraction to the push-backs and the walk-backs

Secondly the Afrikaner issue creates outrage in South Africa but it has created enormous self-mobilization behind South Africa. It consolidates our African base. It returns old allies who were disenchanted for example with our Israel or our Russia position. They’re coming back. They’re saying “No! The attack on you is more important. This Afrikaner thing is ludicrous.”

And they’re bringing new allies like, for example, Europe are rallying to us. So again don’t panic in South Africa about it. It’s working in our favour in the USA.

Thirdly we’re engaging the lawmakers and we’re putting in [unclear] so that when fear subsides of the White House we have planted the alternative view. So we’re doing that kind of seed-laying work.

The fourth one is let other formations that are coming here have their say. Let’s absorb it. And they’re not seen [by?] high-level people but they are high-level social media pushers and therefore let’s absorb that message and respond comprehensively. Not toe-to-toe because that’s the fight that we must avoid as the official voice of South Africa.

Fifthly, let’s hold as in rugby. Let’s hold our impact players back like our envoys and so forth because you don’t come to empty doors. The administration is not yet filled in the state department. There is no Africa division in place. No assistant secretary for Africa, [no] under secretary. You’re knocking on empty doors. The US Trade Representative has just been appointed. There’s no Africa US Trade Representative. You’re knocking on empty doors. So you’ve got to wait for a reasonable filling of those doors before you knock.

Also Don’t come empty-handed. Be ready to deal. Don’t come and say “Oh we want to discuss this and explain to you.” There’s no room for explanation. You saw the Zelensky effect. [UNCLEAR] You’ve got to come here knowing what’s your top line, what’s your middle line, what’s your bottom line, and then put it forward as a negotiating strategy. Otherwise you’re a loser in this and you you’re subject to the Zelensky effect.

Finally manage the G20 handover. Salvage that baby from the bath water. Because the healthy disrespect for global institutions may just, if we play our cards right, be the way in which when we hand over to Donald Trump after four years of global south leadership of the G20. There may be possibly one president that could reform some of the global architecture because it has a healthy disrespect for it. And so let us hope that in the idea of a broken clock being right twice a day that we are able to manage how we do that.

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