Expelled South African ambassador returns home and says will wear US sanction as 'badge of dignity'
Source: AP
Updated 3:13 PM EDT, March 23, 2025
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The South African ambassador who was expelled from the United States and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration was welcomed home at an airport Sunday by hundreds of supporters who sang songs praising him.
Crowds at Cape Town International Airport surrounded Ebrahim Rasool and his wife Rosieda as they emerged in the arrivals terminal in their hometown, and they needed a police escort to help them navigate their way through the building.
“A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” Rasool told the supporters as he addressed them with a megaphone. “But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth ... like this, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity.”“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets.”
Rasool was expelled for comments he made on a webinar that included him saying that the Make America Great Again movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct.” Rasool said on his return home it was important for South Africa to fix its relationship with the U.S. after President Donald Trump punished the country and accused it of taking an anti-American stance even before the decision to expel him.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/trump-south-africa-expelled-ambassador-rasool-d30d1bf06a07bff595357fe80fd8c8ab