By Mark Ogagan
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a former Deputy Finance Minister, Mcebisi Jonas (Pictured), as a special envoy to the United States on Monday after the ambassador was expelled last month by the Trump administration.
Ramaphosa said Mcebisi Jonas’ appointment would help South Africa rebuild its relationship with the U.S., which has deteriorated swiftly since President Donald Trump took office.
Trump has accused the Black-led South African government of mistreating a white minority at home and also criticized its foreign policy as anti-American. He signed an executive order in February cutting U.S. funding to South Africa over those issues.
Trump continued his criticism in a Truth Social post last weekend, when he said the U.S. did not want to attend the Group of 20 summit this year if it were held in South Africa, as scheduled. South Africa holds the rotational presidency of the G20 group of developed and developing nations and is due to host world leaders and top diplomats for a summit in Johannesburg in November.
“Is this where we want to be for the G20? I don’t think so!” Trump posted on Saturday.
In his post, Trump repeated his claim that South Africa was allowing land to be seized from white farmers “and then killing them and their families.”
The South African government has denied white farmers are having their land seized or are victims of race-based killings, as Trump and his South African-born adviser Elon Musk have claimed. South Africa says those claims are based on misinformation.
South Africa has passed a contentious new land expropriation law that allows land to be taken by the government without compensation if it’s in the public interest. That has been criticized by some white minority groups as targeting their land, though no land has yet been taken under the law.
Trump’s executive order also criticized South Africa for lodging a case at the International Court of Justice accusing U.S. ally Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Trump administration said South Africa is pursuing anti-American foreign policies and supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.
South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S. was expelled in March over a talk he gave on a webinar organized by a think tank. In the talk, which he defended as an explanation of the new political dynamics in the U.S., Ebrahim Rasool said Trump was launching “an assault on incumbency — those who are in power” and said the Make America Great Again movement was partly a result of a “supremacist instinct.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Rasool was a “race-baiting politician” who hates Trump, declared him persona non grata and ordered him to leave the U.S. Rasool returned to South Africa to a hero’s welcome from supporters.
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