Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared the Ambassador to the US from South Africa, Embrahim Rasool, persona non grata.
Rasool, 62, a South African muslim of mixed English-Javanese-Dutch-Indian heritage, called President Donald Trump a white supremacist and made disparaging comments about the US at a conference in Johannesburg last week.
He made the comments in a speech about the current SA plans to expropriate land, farms and businesses from white Boer and Afrikaaner families to give to blacks. The ruling ANC recently changed the laws in South Africa to allow the lands to be taken without recompense.
Rasool had been Ambassador to the US from 2010-2015. He was re-nominated by SA president Cyril Ramaphosa near the end of Bidens term and was accepted by Biden on 13 January of this year.
For those unfamiliar with the term in diplomatic circles, declaring someone persona non grata – Latin for a person not wanted or an unwelcome person – is tantamount to expelling that person from the country. A host country may declare any member of a diplomatic staff persona non grata at any time without any explanation.
Featured image: President Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa
In the wake of some newly passed legislation in South Africa, President Trump has imposed a set of sanctions on that country. The legislation in question, The Expropriation Act, makes it easier for the government to expropriate land in the public interest. The African National Congress, the country’s biggest political party, proposed these changes that make it easier for the state to take land without paying for it and address racially skewed land-ownership patterns dating back to the initial settlement of South Africa.
Before we go any further a bit of history is in order. When the first white settlers – who happened to be the Dutch – created a colony in the southern part of Africa there were only scattered settlements of bushmen and Hottentots. The bantu people that now comprise the majority of South Africa’s population did not arrive until the late 1800’s, having moved south from the area that is now Kenya and Tanzania during the Zulu wars. Many, if not most, of the Afrikaner (white) families of South Africa have lived in the region far longer than the black Africans. What’s more, the Afrikaner farmers produce most of the food in South Africa.
The sanctions regime ends all US support to the ANC led government of South Africa. It also ends any US foreign aid regardless of source to South Africa.
Sec. 3. Assistance. (a) All executive departments and agencies (agencies), including the United States Agency for International Development, shall, to the maximum extent allowed by law, halt foreign aid or assistance delivered or provided to South Africa, and shall promptly exercise all available authorities and discretion to halt such aid or assistance.
The Sanctions also include a provision expediting resettlement of any Afrikaners who have their land stolen by the SA government.
Sec. 4. Refugee Resettlement and Other Humanitarian Considerations. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take appropriate steps, consistent with law, to prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination. Such plan shall be submitted to the President through the Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor.
It’s important to remember that South Africa is a nearly failed state already. They can’t keep the electricity on as it stands, the civil infrastructure is crumbling, roads and bridges are third world quality where they exist at all. And if it weren’t for white farmers, they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves either.
Joseph Mathunjwa, a mining union official spelled it out in a speech at a commemoration of a massacre of miners by SA police. The miners were demanding their pay for work done in a platinum mine. “Love or hate white people who were in power before 1994, they gave us a functional country. In as much as the Nationalist Party was cruel, they left us with a functioning state, and then the ANC, the corrupt ANC, took over,” said Mathunjwa
Cyril Ramaphosa, the SA president and head of the ANC is one small step from turning into Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe, or as I prefer to remember it, Rhodesia.
Prior to Mugabe stealing the farms from all the white Rhodesians, Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of southern Africa. The annual maize production went from 40m bushels in 2001, the year land expropriations started to less than 10m bushels a year later. Wheat production suffered similar declines in that time frame, going from 10m bushels to slightly less than 3m bushels.
