ISTANBUL 

Expelled South African Ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool said Sunday he returned home with “no regrets,” following his 32-hour flight from the US via Qatar to Cape Town.

Stating that he would have preferred to come to South Africa with secured deals with the US, Rasool told South Africans in Cape Town: “But we could not do so by allowing the US to choose who must be our friends and who must be our enemies.”

He said they were not able to “succeed” at turning away the “lies of a white genocide” in South Africa.

Rasool highlighted that South Africa could not “win” the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) of the US by withdrawing its genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“Because as we stand here, the bombing has continued and the shooting has continued, and if South Africa was not in the ICJ, Israel would not be exposed, and the Palestinians would have no hope,” he added.

Rasool underlined that he was not there to say that South Africa was anti-American or it had no need for America.

“We come here even after being declared persona non grata. We still come here and say, we must rebuild and we must reset the relationship with America,” he said.

Stressing that South Africa “cannot have a simplistic idea” that “you must put a white ambassador for a white president” in the US, Rasool said: “We have this relationship that we must reset and we must rebuild.”

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared South Africa’s ambassador to the US persona non grata after Rasool, during a webinar hosted by the South African Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, accused Trump of pursuing policies and practices that the envoy characterized as "a white supremacist response to growing demographic diversity in the United States."

The move came amid escalating tensions between Washington and Pretoria. Trump signed an executive order last month cutting US financial assistance to South Africa, citing concerns about its land expropriation law, a genocide case against Israel at the ICJ and deepening ties with Iran.