South African ambassador expelled from US welcomed home by supporters

CAPE TOWN: The South African ambassador who was expelled from the US and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration was welcomed home late on 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 home town, 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,” he said.Rasool was expelled for comments he made on a webinar that included him saying the Maga movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct”.

Rasool said on his return home that it was important for South Africa to fix its relationship with the US after Donald Trump punished the country and accused it of taking an anti-American stance, even before the decision to expel him.

The US president issued an executive order last month cutting all funding to South Africa, alleging its government is supporting Hamas and Iran, and pursuing anti-white policies at home.“We don’t come here to say we are anti-American,” Rasool said to the crowd. “We are not here to call on you to throw away our interests with the United States.”