WASHINGTON: The US decision to expel South Africa’s ambassador was “regrettable”, the office of the South African president said Saturday, after Washington’s top diplomat accused the envoy of hating America and President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that South Africa’s ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, was “no longer welcome” in the United States.

Rasool is “a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS,” Rubio posted on X, 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.”

South Africa’s presidency said in a statement it had “noted the regrettable expulsion” and urged “all relevant and impacted stakeholders 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 presidency said.

The expulsion of the ambassador — a very rare move by the United States — is the latest development in rising tensions between Washington and Pretoria. Trump in February froze US aid to South Africa, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows land to be seized from white farmers.

Last week, Trump further fueled tensions, saying South Africa’s farmers were welcome to settle in the United States after repeating his accusations that the government was “confiscating” land from white people. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.”

One of Trump’s closest allies is South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who has accused South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of having “openly racist ownership laws”. Land ownership is a contentious issue in South Africa, with most farmland still owned by white people three decades after the end of apartheid and the government under pressure to implement reforms.

During a G20 event in South Africa last month, Ramaphosa said he had a “wonderful” call with Trump soon after the US leader took office in January. But relations later “seemed to go a little bit off the rails,” he said. In his X post, Rubio linked to an article from the conservative news outlet Breitbart, which addressed Rasool’s remarks via livestream to a foreign policy seminar on Friday.

“He said that white supremacism was motivating Trump’s ‘disrespect’ for the ‘current hegemonic order’ of the world,” Breitbart reported, adding that Rasool noted that Trump’s Make America Great Again movement “was a white supremacist response to growing demographic diversity in the United States.” Rasool, an anti-apartheid campaigner in his youth, has expressed anger toward the Israeli government for its war in Gaza. In February in an interview with news site Zeteo, he said what South Africans experienced during apartheid rule “is on steroids in Palestine”.

Separately, the Trump administration is mulling a new travel ban that would affect citizens from dozens of countries to varying degrees, the New York Times reported Friday. Citing anonymous officials, it said the draft list featured 43 countries, divided into three categories of travel restrictions. The red category of countries whose citizens would be completely barred from entering the United States includes Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

Another 10 countries in the orange category — Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan — would see their visas sharply restricted. “In those cases, affluent business travelers might be allowed to enter, but not people traveling on immigrant or tourist visas,” the New York Times said. Citizens from countries on the orange list would also have to undergo in-person interviews to receive a visa.

Another 22 countries on a yellow list would have 60 days to address US concerns or risk being moved up to one of the more stringent categories. “The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House,” the New York Times said.

As one of his first acts in office, Trump froze the United States’ refugee admission program and almost all foreign aid. Trump ordered the US government to identify countries whose nationals should be banned from entering on security grounds, a move akin to the so-called “Muslim ban” of his first term. – Agencies