The United States is in effect expelling South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio accusing the envoy of hating the country and President Donald Trump.

“South Africa’s ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” Rubio posted on X on Friday, The Guardian reported.

Rubio accused ambassador Ebrahim Rasool of being “a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS”, 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.”

Neither Rubio nor the State Department gave an immediate explanation for the decision. However, Rubio linked to a Breitbart story about a talk Rasool gave earlier on 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 US where white people would soon no longer be a majority.

Rasool pointed to Elon Musk’s outreach to far-right figures in Europe, calling it a “dog whistle” in a global movement trying to rally people who see themselves as part of an “embattled white community”.

Rasool is a former anti-apartheid campaigner who served time in prison for his activism and went on to become a politician in the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, the country’s first post-apartheid president.

The expulsion of an ambassador is a very rare move by the US, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.

In response, South Africa’s presidency said in an online post that it had noted the “regrettable expulsion of South Africa’s ambassador” and urged everyone to maintain the “established diplomatic decorum” on the matter.

It is the latest development in rising tensions between Washington and Pretoria. In February, Trump 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 US 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 Musk, who has accused South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of having “openly racist ownership laws”.

South Africa was ruled by white Afrikaner leaders during apartheid, which violently repressed the country’s black majority, including forcing them to live in segregated townships and rural “homelands”. Afrikaners are descended mainly from the Dutch, who began colonizing South Africa in 1652, as well as French Huguenot refugees sponsored by the Dutch.

More than three decades after white minority rule ended, South Africa remains hugely unequal, with land and wealth still largely concentrated among white people, who make up 7% of the population, about half native Afrikaans speakers, while black people are 81%.

However, some white South Africans claim they are discriminated against, often citing the country’s affirmative action laws.