President Cyril Ramaphosa’s grip on his party, and its alliance partners, appears as feeble as his handle on the economy. Watching ejected US ambassador Ebrahim Rasool’s return to SA, staged like a triumphant homecoming, must have been particularly galling given his orders to tone it down just days before.
Red carpets, fists raised, revolutionary slogans recycled from a script that should’ve been shredded in 1994. The ANC, SACP and Cosatu are spinning this as a stand for sovereignty, when in fact it’s a political farce wrapped in ideological cosplay. In the real world, the one where bond spreads matter more than intellectual geopolitical self-gratification, Rasool’s kamikaze diplomacy has already cost SA dearly.
But let’s not get distracted by the ideological smoke grenades. Yes, Trump 2.0 is exactly what many feared — a white-nationalist-friendly, Christian nationalist, American exceptionalist regime trying to roll back everything from multilateralism to the global free trade order. That’s not the issue. The issue is that Rasool wasn’t appointed to pick fights with the host government, especially not fights he couldn’t win. His job was to protect and advance SA’s interests, not to treat Foggy Bottom like a Friday khutbah pulpit.
Instead, Rasool treated Washington like a stage for his long-running one-man theatre of moral superiority. His statement on returning home, draped in messianic self-regard, told us everything we need to know: “I went to represent a moral superpower in a world that has lost its moral anchor.” Please. Diplomats aren’t there to proclaim their country’s moral supremacy. That’s the language of martyrs, not statesmen. And make no mistake, Rasool didn’t get crucified for standing up to empire. He was just catastrophically bad at his job.
The US didn’t toss Rasool for singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika too loudly or wearing a keffiyeh at brunch. He was declared persona non grata, which in case he needs reminding is one of the most serious rebukes in diplomacy, because he couldn’t resist the lure of ideological exhibitionism. His ties to entities linked to Hamas and Hezbollah, his unabashed praise for Sheikh Yassin, a founder of a US-designated terrorist organisation, and his refusal to moderate even rhetorically once tensions escalated, made him toxic. Add to that his social media potshots at Trump and a spectacular failure to maintain any meaningful diplomatic engagement with the administration, and the expulsion was inevitable.
SA doesn’t need moral theatre in Washington right now. It needs cold, competent diplomacy.
Washington didn’t blink. It shut the door and threw away the key. Meanwhile, we have blinked so hard we’re now staring blind into the abyss. Why? Because Rasool didn’t act alone. He was hand-picked and deployed by a governing class still drunk on its own revolution-era mythology. The ANC, or more precisely the faction still clinging to the levers of foreign policy inside the government of national unity (GNU) like Gollum to his ring, thought it could play a 1970s anti-imperialist Greatest Hits mixtape in 2025’s Washington and not get burnt. They forgot the number one rule of diplomacy, which is all about having two ears and one mouth — listen twice as much as you speak, and communicate what you know twice as well as you think you understand it.
Consider the ongoing saga of renaming Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive. Nomvula Mokonyane, the ANC’s first deputy secretary-general, a faux communist who is often draped in bling, reportedly said: “We want the US embassy to change their letterhead to Number 1 Leila Khaled Drive.” This isn't just petty; it's geopolitical arson. Even Ramaphosa had to step in, recognising the diplomatic sensitivities and urging a halt to the renaming to avoid further inflaming the situation.
This whole episode lays bare the fatal flaw in our approach to international relations: the delusion that Brics+ gives us the leverage to poke the West in the eye without consequence. As XA Global Trade Advisors CEO Donald MacKay rightly put it: “Whether Trump was in charge or not, the way SA handles its relationship with the largest economy in the world is astonishing. We seem to believe we can antagonise the West without consequence because of Brics.
“It’s worth remembering that we export more to Zimbabwe than we do to the whole of Brics+ if you remove China and India. Iran will not be buying SA government debt or platinum from SA. The problem with punching above your weight only becomes apparent when your much larger, cauliflower-eared opponent notices you and punches back.” And punch back it has.
With Brics 2.0 more symbolic than strategic, and our trade balance still dependent on Western markets, we’ve picked the worst possible time to antagonise our largest non-African investor and a vital diplomatic counterweight. Rasool didn’t stand up to empire. He fell into its trap and took the rest of us with him.
Meanwhile, Cosatu and the SACP are staging a street-level passion play, chanting about sovereignty and imperialism while the real damage accrues away from the sensationalist headlines with diplomatic isolation and economic decoupling. American investors aren’t tuning in to rallies. They’re reading Fitch reports. And they’re pulling back.
The way forward isn’t clear, but one thing is: Rasool’s conduct was not an act of courage, it was a failure of responsibility. His enablers in the ANC must own this debacle. The GNU was supposed to bring a new era of pragmatism. Instead, the old guard continues to treat SA’s foreign policy as if it’s still 1985 and apartheid is the only defining issue in the world.
SA doesn’t need moral theatre in Washington right now. It needs cold, competent diplomacy. Rasool was the absolute antithesis of that. If the GNU is serious about playing it nonaligned, former DA leader Tony Leon — a past ambassador to Argentina — should be packing his bags for Washington this week.
• Avery, a financial journalist and broadcaster, produces BDTV's ‘Business Watch’. Contact him at Badger@businesslive.co.za.
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