Sovereignty and Persona Non-grata in Diplomacy: Beyond US, Rwandan, and EU Destabilisation Threats
Bola A. Akinterinwa
The conduct and management of diplomacy in international relations is largely driven by the protection of core national interests, and particularly by the principles of self-preservation. Self-preservation is essentially about national identity and national identity is sustained through defence and maintenance of territorial integrity, ensuring national unity and security, and promoting economic growth and development. Whenever there are any threats to the protection of the national interest, several tools are resorted to. They include the use of foreign policy if the threats are externally driven. In all cases, Cold War and Hot War can be engaged in. Whatever can be done to undermine the enemy is normally the choice.
For instance, several governments easily engage in citizen diplomacy to attract empathy and sympathy when there are misunderstandings. In situations where the people are perceived to be antagonistic, concerned Governments often prevent such antagonists from being given entry visas to their countries. They use whatever means at their disposal to prevent the survival of such antagonists. It is in this context that the principle of persona non-grata is often adopted and the threats to destabilise the European Union (UN), if not to compel the EU to disintegrate is a serious matter. This is why the affirmation of national sovereignty and protectionism to the detriment of supranational authority has become a desideratum.
It was in consonance with the claim to the right of sovereignty that the United States under President Donald Trump declared the South African Ambassador to the United States persona non-grata. It is the same rationale for Rwanda’s notification of severance of diplomatic relations with Belgium. And perhaps more disturbingly, the holding of meetings by the Heritage Foundation to probably destabilise the EU is a challenge to the collective EU sovereignty. The Heritage Foundation is against collectivised sovereignty and wants the return to national sovereignty à l’Americana.
Sovereignty and Persona Non-grata
Sovereignty is, at best, a very controversial concept in political science and international law. It used to be synonymous with supreme power or supreme authority. It is a derivative from superanus (Latin) through souveraineté (French). The historical development of the concept is quite interesting. It was Jean Bodin (1530-1596) who first used the concept to promote ‘the power of the French King over the rebellious feudal lords, facilitating the transition from feudalism to nationalism.’
Thereafter, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), an English philosopher, posited that a true state or group of persons cannot but have the ultimate and absolute authority to declare the law and that the moment this absolute authority is divided, the unity of the State is also unnecessarily destroyed. In fact, another English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) see sovereignty as a social contract. It was considered that the state is a resultant from citizens or a social contract that enabled the entrustment of power by the citizens to the government. This is generally considered as popular sovereignty.
What is particularly noteworthy here is the definition of sovereignty in the 1791 Constitution of France: ‘Sovereignty is one, indivisible, unalienable and imprescriptible; it belongs to the Nation; no group can attribute sovereignty to itself nor can an individual arrogate it to himself.’ But who actually exercise the right of sovereignty? In the eyes of John Austin (1790-1859), it is vested in a nation’s parliament, hence we are talking about legislative sovereignty which may be arguable in the context of a semi-presidential or a full presidential system.
In a nutshell, sovereignty can be of various types. There is the most talked about sovereignty, state sovereignty, the origin of which has been traced to the 1648 Westphalian Treaty which concluded the 30-year old European War between the Catholic and Protestant States in Europe. More than 8 million people lost their lives in the war. It was the Treaty of Westphalia that not only established state sovereignty but also established sovereign equality according to which all states were to have sole authority over their domestic affairs. It was the foreign religious interferences in the domestic affairs of the Protestant churches that partly originated the war.
Apart from state sovereignty, there are also plural, parliamentary, popular, etc., sovereignty. All of them have always been subject of abuse. One rationale for the abuse is the consideration that sovereignty is the ultimate overseer in political theory. Every state does what it considers of interest, thereby creating a situation of conflict of interest. As such, the right of sovereignty is abused.
When the concept of sovereignty is related to the application of persona non grata, a school of thought has argued that sovereigns who make laws cannot be bound by the laws they enact. This absolutist character of sovereignty was interrogated and brought to an end with the advent of The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The two Conventions came up with rules to guide the conduct of wars on land and on sea.
In fact, the Covenant of the League of Nations not only restricted the right to go to war, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact totally condemned the use of war as an instrument of solution-finding when there are disputes. Today, the story is a different kettle of fish. The use force is condoned in the context of collective defence and legitimate self-defence. All these are made possible as a result of the right to sovereignty which the United Nations says all States have equally. It is precisely because every state is believed, rightly or wrongly, to have equal sovereignty that, whenever a state feels offended by another state, the right of revenge or reciprocity becomes applicable. One major manifestation of this is always the declaring of the Principal Representative of the offending state persona non grata.
The expression persona non grata is of Latin origin, meaning unwelcomed or unwanted person. Persona means ‘person,’ non means ‘not,’ and grata means ‘acceptable.’ With the prefix non placed before grata, a person becomes unwanted. It is a reactive policy in international diplomatic practice. It is generally adopted in furtherance of the exercise of the right of sovereignty. More importantly, it is mostly used as an open protest and disapproval. The exercise of this right of disapproval is not in any way peculiar to the disapproving or protesting State, the State against which the protest is targeted also has the same right to react, hence the issue of sovereign reciprocity.
A reciprocal treatment can be likened to a reaction in physics in which we talk about every action being equal and opposite as posited by Isaac Newton. In diplomacy, reciprocity may not be commensurate with the originating act. It is important to note that reciprocity in this context is not the type of reciprocity in international economic relations in which there can be mutual exchange of benefits or in which we talk about the most favoured nation clause or in which there is an obligation to return one expression of favour and kindness. Reciprocity in the context of diplomacy may not be positive like it is in the case of commercial relations. When there is reciprocity and force is used, we talk about reprisals and when it is done without the use of force, we talk about retorsion.
And without whiff of doubt, reciprocity has a biblical foundation that preaches doing unto others what one wants others to do unto us. As provided in Luke 6:31, ‘do to others as you would have them do to you.’ This is generally considered ‘The Golden Rule,’ in inter-personal relationships. In the same vein, Mathew 7:12 says ‘so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the Prophets.’ In other words, if an act of kindness is visited with unkindness, should the unkindness also be compensated with unkindness? Biblically, this may not be so. In diplomacy, there is no room for godliness or moralism. This is why reciprocity in diplomacy is different.
Put differently, the declaration of the South African Ambassador by the US government is a case of retorsion and not that of reprisal Cases of retorsion abound in international relations especially in cases in which diplomatic agents have been accused of engaging in acts that are considered to be incompatible with the status of a diplomatic agent. Such cases are mostly related to espionage. The case of the South African ambassador is quite far from spying. The definienda are more critical.
US, Rwanda, and EU Threats
As noted earlier, the right of sovereignty is always abused by countries that have the means to do so. In fact, as observed in “The Uses and Abuses of Sovereignty (Foreign Policy, October 09) by Shaun Tan, a Hong Kong based writer, ‘Donald Trump seems to like the term sovereignty so much so that in his recent UN speech, he used it, or the word sovereign twenty-one times…’ As Shaun Tan further put it, ‘around the world, sovereignty is used by every crude nationalist and tin pot dictator to defend the indefensible,’ and that sovereignty ‘precludes argument, ignoring facts, logic, and morality. It refuses to engage in debate… It is mind your own business.’ It is against this background of right to sovereignty and its abuse that the cases of the United States, Rwanda and the EU threats are hereto explained.
First, at the level of the United States, as much as sovereignty implies minding one’s own business, it is also a right to interfere and intervene. While President Trump uses sovereignty to justify his ‘America First Policy,’ China uses it to defend the allegations of human rights violations. As Shaun Tan put it again, ‘Saudi Arabia invokes sovereignty to deflect criticism of its barbaric domestic practices. Vladimir Putin invokes it to defend his purging of dissidents. Even the DPRK invokes it to defend its totalitarian rule.’ Consequently, there cannot be any big deal in the United States of Donald Trump declaring the South African Ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, persona non grata. Every country tries to avoid resolutions or agreements that have the potential to infringe on their sovereignty or freedom to act.
At the level of US-South African relations, the declaration of the South African ambassador as unacceptable cannot be rightly said to be in pursuit of America First policy but in defence of the interests of the white South Africans. This observation is made clear in the text of the declaration of persona non grata: ‘the Department of State, in accordance with Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, wishes to inform the Embassy of the Republic of South Africa that Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool is declared persona non grata. The Department of State will no longer recognise Ambassador Rasool as a Member of the Mission as of Monday, Mar 17, at which point his privileges and immunities will cease. He and his dependents are required to depart the US no later than March 21.’
One point is noteworthy in this declaration. This is about the United States clearly differentiating between the recognition of South Africa as a sovereign State and recognition of its government, whose representative has been declared unwanted. Additionally, Ambassador Rasool is considered unacceptable for any possible future accreditation as a member of the South African mission to the United States. As the Department of State put it, ‘Ambassador Rasool’s recent comments regarding the President of the United States were deeply offensive and make it impossible for the United States government to continue engaging with the Ambassador.’ More importantly, US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, described the ambassador as a ‘race-bailing politician’ who hates Donald Trump and the United States (Vide BBC News, Washington, 15th March, 2025). Does this partly explain why Ambassador Rasool was declared unwanted?
At the level of South Africa, the concern is not in any way different. The United States wants a status quo that South Africa is not prepared to maintain. On the one hand, South Africa sees US under Donald Trump as supremacist and anti-black which the US does not want to accept. The South African ambassador put it this way: Donald Trump was ‘mobilising a supremacism’ and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle,” as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US’ (BBC News, ibid). Most pointedly, Ambassador Rasool said ‘we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the Maga Movement as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to a very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white.’
In the eyes of many observers, this statement was a major interference in the domestic affairs of the United States and that Ambassador Rasool should have known the consequences, having served as Ambassador to the United States in the period 2010-2015 before his 2024 re-accreditation. The most often ignored truth is the rationale behind the conscious statement of the ambassador which is the US policy of dualism, preaching fairness and justice on the one hand and openly acting contrarily to justice and fairness, on the other.
As recalled by the BBC News, Ambassador Rasool ‘was himself forcibly removed from his home in Cape Town’s District Six as a child after it was declared a white area under the apartheid government.’ This cannot but also explains the attitudinal disposition of the Ambassador, and probably his anti-white sentiments. In fact, the 2022 South African census said that the White people, including the Afrikaners, accounted for about 7.2% of the whole population, whereas the 2018 land audit carried out by the Government revealed that the White farmers owned 72% of the country’s individually-held farmland, to borrow the words of the BBC News. This situation is not different from the policy of Chimurenga in Zimbabwe where the most fertile land is owned by the White Zimbabweans and which the late President Roberto Mugabe tried to readjust.
Perhaps most disturbingly is the fact that the White South Africans want to be carved out of South Africa in order to be autonomous. The South African government is apparently not ready for that. This is one major reason behind the US declaration of the South African Ambassador as unwanted in the US today either as a diplomatic agent or as a future private visitor to the US. Donald Trump wants the minority White to have the greater part of the land to the detriment of the majority black South Africans. While the United States is using its sovereignty to support the white South Africans, black South Africa, on the contrary, is using its own sovereignty to reposition the land ownership.
Rwanda-Belgian relationship has the same character. While the case of White South Africans prompted Donald Trump’s support for them, the strained diplomatic relations between Rwanda and Belgium was largely prompted by the difference in their policy stand towards the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda is supporting the M-23 while Belgium is supporting the incumbent government. In the eyes of the Rwandan Foreign Ministry, Belgium ‘continues to systematically mobilise against Rwandan in various forums, using lies and manipulation to create an unjustified hostile opinion towards Rwanda.’ Rwanda actually accused Belgium of ‘pathetic attempts to maintain its neo-colonial illusions. With this view of the Belgian government, Rwanda strained her diplomatic ties with Belgium, giving 48 hours ultimatum for the Belgian diplomats to check out of Rwanda.
Belgium reciprocated, arguing that the action of Rwanda is ‘disproportionate and shows that when we disagree with Rwanda they prefer not to engage in dialogue.’ Consequently, Belgium similarly promised to take appropriate reciprocal measures against Rwanda. The truth again is that which European country or American country is interested in peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The Congolese crisis, right from 1960, has been to protect the Congolese mineral resources to the advantage of European countries but to the detriment of Soviet Union/Russia. DRC is apparently supported by many EU countries, and particularly by Belgium. Rwanda, for whatever reasons, is supporting rebels fighting the incumbent government in the DRC. When African countries are divided against themselves why should anyone be blamed for taking advantage to exploit the situation.
The European Union already has regional integration challenges, the Heritage Foundation is seeking to add salt to injury. The Heritage Foundation, which came up with Project 2025, that is, about Presidential Transition Project in April 2023, has met and has reportedly been seeking to dismantle any unaccountable, liberal bureaucracies. Many observers this development will not only lead to undermining the rule of law, separation of powers, separation of the Church and the State.
What is perhaps more interesting is that the Project 2025 not only seeks to criminalise pornography, removing legal protection against anti-LGBT discrimination, but also seeking the Department of Justice to arrest, detain and deport illegal immigrants, but also for the military to ensure execution of the policy. All these measures are undertaken under the right of sovereignty. There is no problem if the politics of it is limited to the US, but there is problem if the dream is to be exported to the EU. This is also why Africa should make haste slowly, as well as tread more cautiously regarding the implications of the activities of the Heritage Foundation for Africa
The current world of globalisation has the potential to witness the use of application of sovereignty and declaration of Ambassadors as persona non grata in diplomatic relations as future instruments of challenge to big power politics. They may not only challenge the domination by big powers in global governance, but may also intensify the use of sovereignty and persona non grata to strengthen self-reliance in the making of a new global order. We believe, and strongly too, that the declaration of Ambassador Rasool as persona non grata cannot suppress the South African new nationalism, but has the potential to harden their resolve in the quest for justice. There is therefore the need to look beyond the United States who is ordinarily looking down on South Africa. In the same vein, Belgium must learn that her neo-colonialism in Rwanda cannot thrive by using a manu militari or stick and carrot diplomacy. And perhaps most disturbingly, the idea of the Heritage Foundation that the European Union can be destabilised to the advantage of returning to nationalism cannot but be a dream too far-fetched. Regionalism has been until now a major tool of global governance and maintenance of peace and security, as well as economic growth and development in Africa, and Nigeria in particular. If anyone is kick-starting a war on regional integration ECOWAS leaders cannot but take notice of the new trend.
