News24 | Rasool returns from US after fallout with Trump administration: No regrets, ‘I stand by’ what I said

• Former SA ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool returned from the US on Sunday.
• Rasool emphasised that he has no regrets.
• The former ambassador was declared persona non grata and expelled from Washington last week. 

Former South African ambassador to the United States Ebrahim Rasool says he stands by his comments about US President Donald Trump.

Rasool and his wife touched down at Cape Town International Airport on Sunday morning. 

READ | Mbalula attacks 'neocolonial, imperialist' Trump administration

A heavy police presence and a media scrum flanked the couple.

Speaking to the media and ANC alliance partners, Rasool said he had no regrets.

"My remarks were with the [Mapungubwe] institute speaking to South African intelligents, intellectuals, political leaders and others to alert them to a change of the way we live, to a change of the way we are positioned in the United States, that the old way of doing business with the US was not a good one," Rasool said. 

READ | ‘Implacable enemy’: As Rasool returns, ANC veteran Zikalala says it’s naïve to rebuild US relations

He added that the US, under former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, differed from the Trump administration.

Rasool insisted that there was nothing wrong with what he said.

"There's nothing that I will say there that I would not say elsewhere. And so, I would stand by my analysis because we were analysing a political phenomenon, not a personality, not a nation, and not even a government. And so, I stand by that."

Rasool is expected to give a full report to President Cyril Ramaphosa.

He said he was ready to brief the Presidency. 

The former ambassador was declared persona non grata and expelled from Washington last week for comments he made related to the Trump administration.

Rasool's comments at a recent Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) webinar were seemingly used as a justification to expel him, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio commenting on social media that Rasool "was no longer welcome in our great country".

During the webinar, Rasool accused Trump of launching an assault on incumbency. 

"The second discontinuity is almost that I think what Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilising a supremacism against the incumbency at home and I think I’ve illustrated abroad as well.

"So in terms of that supremacist assault on incumbency we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement, as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA, in which the voting electorate is projected to become 48% white and that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon," he said. 

READ: Mondli Makhanya | SA-US relations: Zero chance of reset with the Trump cult

Rasool's expulsion has escalated tensions between Pretoria and the US.

Meanwhile, alliance partners of the ANC defied President Cyril Ramaphosa's request for restraint as they gathered at Cape Town International Airport to welcome Rasool home. 

Alliance partners such as trade union federation Cosatu and the SA Communist Party (SACP), as well as the ANC's Dullah Omar branch, came out in numbers to support Rasool.

Cosatu provincial secretary Malvern de Bruyn said during their congress meeting held last week, a resolution was passed to welcome back Rasool. 

He said: 

SACP secretary general Benson Ngqentsu said: "We are here to welcome Ambassador Rasool, to commend him for having represented our country well in the United States of America. And important about his role was that he refused to submit [to] the details of the right-wing populist, authoritarian Western imperialists. So that for me is very important. And further, he reasserted our national sovereignty as a country."

ANC Dullah Omar regional secretary Mvusi Mdala said that they respect the Presidency. 

"We have gathered here and we respect the Presidency and we are not violent or anything we are showing our solidarity," he said.