US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says South Africa’s ambassador is no longer welcome in the country

A statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said it had "noted the regrettable expulsion" of Rasool and called on its diplomatic officials “to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter.” “South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States of America,” the statement said. Rasool became an anti-apartheid campaigner, serving time in prison for his activism and identifying as a comrade of the country’s first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela. “The supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the U.S.A., 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 U.S.A. in which the voting electorate in the U.S.A. is projected to become 48% white," the South African ambassador said. He pointed to Musk’s outreach to far-right figures in Europe, calling it a “dog whistle” in a global movement trying to rally people who see themselves as part of an “embattled white community.”