WASHINGTON, March 15, (AP): US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States "is no longer welcome” in the country, in the latest Trump administration move targeting the African nation. Rubio, in a post on X, accused Ebrahim Rasool of being a "race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump.

Rubio declared the South African diplomat "persona non grata.” Neither Rubio, who posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada, nor the State Department gave any immediate explanation for the decision. But Rubio linked to a story by the ultraconservative Breitbart news site about a talk Rasool gave earlier Friday as part of a South African think tank's webinar in which he spoke about actions taken by the Trump administration in the context of a United States where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.

Both Trump and his ally Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa, have criticized the country's Black-led government over a new land law they claim discriminates against white people. It is highly unusual for the US to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.

At the height of US-Russia diplomatic expulsions during the Cold War and then again over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, allegations of interference in the 2016 US election and the 2018 poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer in Britain, neither Washington nor Moscow saw fit to expel the respective ambassadors. 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 previously served as his country’s ambassador to the US from 2010 to 2015 before returning to the post in January. As a child, he and his family were evicted from a Cape Town neighborhood designated for white people.