Ebrahim Rasool is no longer welcome in the US following MISTRA webinar: What he said

​US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said South Africa's ambassador to Washington is "no longer welcome" in the US.

​In a post to X, ​Rubio accused diplomat Ebrahim Rasool of being a "race-baiting politician" who hated US Preside​nt Donald Trump. In his post, Rubio linked to an article from the conservative US media outlet Breitbart, which commented on remarks Rasool made Friday during a South African think tank's webinar.

The South African government on Saturday morning had not issued a statement clarifying the international incident. IOL will be reaching out to the Presidency for comment. 

Transcript from MISTRA webinar
On Friday the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) hosted a webinar, Implications of changes in US administration for South Africa and Africa saying following his electoral victory last year, Donald Trump returned to the White House for his second stint as President of the US. In two months, his administration has swiftly implemented policy changes affecting science diplomacy, trade relations, humanitarian aid and other matters. 

What Ebrahim Rasool, the former South African Ambassador to the US, said:

I want to start with an issue of perspective, because how South Africa responds to this current relationship with the US is going to demand quite a lot of respect and 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. Often, a country makes its policies based on which lens it keeps against each 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 interests and calibrated its interests through that lens. I think there are definitely countries that invert the telescope and put their interests against their eyes and then calibrate their values. So, that’s the first perspective I think we must keep in mind as we navigate this relationship.

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 to work with. In fact, I would recommend that some of us get hold of this publication—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.

If we accept, as this framework document says, that national interests are those interests based on strategic ones—where our goals and objectives are needed for our nation’s economy, security, and well-being—then it would consist, by and large, of matters, for example, of defense 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 interests 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 US political life? I think in doing this, it is going to be useful for us to recognise the many continuities in the Trump administration that are inherited from the Biden administration. For example, it was Biden who started putting pressure—under his regime—on AGOA for 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 very frenetic attempts to maintain US ideological hegemony, particularly in the way in which it armed, for example, Ukraine and Israel for that hegemony. So, I want to say that we mustn’t miss, through an obsession with Donald Trump, we must not miss 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 a healthy disrespect for NATO, the sense about whether the United Nations is as important, the bypassing of monies from the US, from the World Bank, IMF, etc.

So, I think there is clearly a clear discontinuity, and I think 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 this, abroad as well.

So, in terms of that, the supremacist assault on incumbency we see in the domestic politics of the US—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 US, in which the voting electorate in the US is projected to become 48% white, and the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon. That needs to be factored in so that we understand some of the things we think are instinctive, nativist, racist things. I think there’s data that for example, would support that: the  wall being built, the deportation movement, etc.

So, I think I mentioned that there is also an export of the revolution. It’s no accident that Elon Musk has involved himself in UK politics and elevated a Nigel Farage and the Reform movement in much the same way that it was instructed that, on his way to the Munich Security Summit, [US] Vice President [JS] Vance addressed the Alternative für Deutschland to strengthen them in their election campaign and that then begins to say: what was the role then of Afrikaners in that old makeup?

Very clearly, it’s to project white victimhood as a darkj whistle that there is a global protective 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 not the dark whistle that is being heard in a global white base. So, I think we need to understand all of that.

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

I think we’ve got to get out of categories of thinking that are falling by the wayside and it’s forcing critical transitions in the world—this idea of undermining incumbency. It’s firing and forcing transitions from a system where the incumbent 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. It’s a way to deal with emerging multilateralism and shifting, for example, from a focus on BRICS - where the Trump and Biden administrations were very obsessed with BRICS as the locus of the emerging 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 discern from this side.

The third issue that I then want to raise is: what is this power that is being exercised? I think the power exercised is of the shock-and-awe variety. It is very—one of the South Africans who are here in that kind of inner circle of MAGA wrote the book The Agenda, in which Joel Pollak, for example, speaks about the 200 executive orders that must be prosecuted within the first 100 days. 

I think this shock and awe is being exercised across the US. We’ve seen DOGE at work, we’ve seen the borders, we’ve seen the attack on DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] and wokeism, and we’ve seen social cuts in the US. Secondly, at the global level, we all know that the stopping of aid and assistance, the multilateral financing system, is brought down through, for example, anything that sounds like climate—like the JP—the trade and tariffs dominating the agenda and the geopolitical sphere. Then South Africa fits into that.

We are not unique in all of that, but we fit into that because we are the historical antidote to supremacism, the success story of it—our GNU [Government of National Unity]. It’s 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 are called the hot-button issues: Israel and the ICJ, the Afrikaner issues, BRICS and de-dollarization, China and Taiwan and the Liaison Office, the allegation of Iran funding, and the Russia-Ukraine thing is receding on that. Then there’s the bread-and-butter economics, like the aid budgets 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.

Then the question is: what are the interventions that I think we are looking at from the US? Again, in summary, in elegant form, let me mention six quick ones.

1. The first thing is: stay calm and don’t panic. I know there’s a lot of panic being engendered because they see allegations coming to the US and saying, “When is the president sending his envoy?” I think we’ve got to let the pushback and the walk-back mature in the US and see what the common-law meetings are doing to next year’s electoral projections. Because if we do half the work that we think some of our envoys can be doing, and we do it too early, we give a distraction to the pushbacks and the walk-backs.
2. Secondly, the Afrikaner issue creates outrage in South Africa, but it has created enormous self-mobilisation behind South Africa. It consolidates our African base. It returns old allies who were disenchanted, for example, with our Israel position or our Russia stance—they’re coming back. They’re saying, “No, no, no, the attack on you is more important. This Afrikaner thing is ludicrous,” and they’re bringing new allies—for example, Europe is rallying to us. So again, don’t panic in South Africa about it; it’s working in our favor in the US.
3. Thirdly, we’re engaging the lawmakers, and we’re putting in deposits so that when fear subsides of the White House, we have planted the alternative view. So, we’re doing that kind of seedling work.
4. The fourth one is: let other formations that are coming here have their say. Let’s absorb it. They’re not seen as high-level people, but they are high-level social media pushes, 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.
5. Fifthly, let’s hold—as in rugby—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 USTR [ United States Trade Representative] has just been appointed; there’s no Africa USTR—you’re knocking on empty doors. So, you’ve got to wait for a reasonable filling of those doors before you knock. Secondly, 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: if you pre-verdict, you’re a loser. 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’re subject to the Zelensky effect.
6. Finally, manage the G20 handover—salvage that baby from the bathwater—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 who could reform some of the global architecture, because he has a healthy disrespect for it. So, let us hope that, in the idea of a broken clock being right twice a day, we are able to manage how we do that.

Webinar introduction by Dr. Sandy Africa new Director of Research:

We’ve approached the setup of this webinar with the hope that it will contribute to public debates, which have been raging—quite curiously—about what has happened since President Donald Trump assumed office earlier this year. As we considered this, we accepted that Trump’s election and the Republican Party’s success in the polls in November last year were the result of a democratic process. However, we also noted that these elections were highly contested and have led to policy changes with implications for South Africa and the African continent.

What particularly surprised us was how these shifts impacted even traditional Western allies of the US. Analysts have pointed out that Trump’s actions align with his election campaign promises, so his executive acts, decrees, and orders shouldn’t really surprise us.

Since his swearing-in, we’ve seen moves like the mass expulsion of undocumented migrants from the US, the withdrawal of foreign aid to countries worldwide, threats to acquire territories like Greenland and to make Canada a state of the US, pressure on European allies to take greater responsibility for their defence and security, demands that Ukraine repay support received during its war with Russia, and ongoing debates in the media about tariffs on imports from both friends and foes—and what this might mean.

Many are asking whether these executive decisions should be seen as an aberration in American politics, after which the pendulum will swing back to normal, with the US resuming its role as the leader of the free world through military might and soft power. Or is the US administration genuinely disenchanted with globalisation and global supply chains, increasingly keen to build walls and go it alone—or at least operate on its own terms—while taking less responsibility for global troubles? In other words, with scores of executive orders and decisions already issued, is there a grand strategy at work in a world marked by a decentring of power, a redistribution of influence among fewer states, and the growing role of non-state actors in global governance and decision-making? It wouldn’t be surprising if this is all part of a grand strategy. What is that strategy? We hope our speakers can help us understand what it might be.

Looking at domestic politics in the US, we see developments like the shutting down of government departments in the name of efficiency, the release of individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6 insurrection, the firing of senior government officials—including key security appointments—the rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and the reversal of gender rights. Are these temporary aberrations, after which liberal norms and values will regain prominence? Or do they reflect long-term political, economic, and ideological trends, with President Donald Trump’s performative political style bringing them to our TV and phone screens in an unprecedentedly forceful way?

These were the questions we asked ourselves as we identified and approached speakers to share their perspectives today. We believe it’s critical to analyse what’s happening to American institutions and whether the checks and balances—touted as the bedrock of the political system—are functioning. What’s the prognosis for these institutions, and what does it mean for society?

We also aim to understand the role of big tech in US politics, which could be seen as a non-state actor challenging traditional governance institutions with informal sources of power. This may signal the shape of things to come. Additionally, we want to assess the geopolitical implications of these administrative changes and their impact on international security. While our attention is fixed on Ukraine and Russia, we recognise other conflicts where the US plays varying roles—either directing events or exerting significant influence. We’re keen to reflect on policy changes and their implications for South Africa and African countries across multiple levels: foreign policy that needs recalibration, trade relations, and even people-to-people connections.

MISTRA has been researching these issues and reflecting on Africa and South Africa’s place in the world since its inception. Our last edited collection on this theme, Reflections on Africa’s Place in the World, was published in 2022, following other works assessing Africa’s challenges and opportunities in a shifting geopolitical landscape. Last year, as our programme director mentioned, we hosted a successful conference asking whether the world is witnessing a power transition—where the hegemony of a once-dominant state is challenged by a new contender—or gravitating towards a multipolar global order. In this order, traditional post-World War II institutions are increasingly contested or supplemented by new forms of sovereignty, regional organisations, financing instruments, and alliances built on economic cooperation, all amid the rise of powers like BRICS, of which South Africa is a member.

African countries, heavily reliant on foreign aid, have felt the impact of suspended US grants. Yet, the US has not clearly outlined its foreign policy intentions for South Africa or how Africa fits into its grand strategy—perhaps indicating that Africa isn’t a high priority. It would be valuable to hear the ambassador’s view on this. If true, this could give African countries, both individually and collectively, time to observe, take stock of the situation, and plot scenarios—identifying areas of potential alignment with the US as it recalibrates, as well as points of friction and how to navigate them.

* This transcript was recorded and transcribed with the help of AI and might not be exact.

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