Ebrahim Rasool, the expelled South African ambassador to the United States, said on Sunday (Mar 23) that he returned home with "no regrets" amid a diplomatic row with President Donald Trump's government. 

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"It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets," Ebrahim Rasool told hundreds of supporters in Cape Town. 

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Trump recently withdrew financial aid to South Africa due to what he claims is its anti-white land policy, its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and other foreign policy disputes. 

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After Trump's decision, the ties between Washington and Pretoria sunk to a new low, it deteriorated even more after remarks by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who last week said Rasool, who is a former anti-apartheid campaigner, was a "race-baiting politician" who hates Trump. 

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Rubio reposted an article from right-wing website Breitbart that quoted the envoy as saying that Trump was leading a white supremacist movement. 

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Rasool, defended his remarks on Sunday, saying he was speaking to South African intellectuals, political leaders and others to tell them that the "old way of doing business with the US was not going to work." 

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"Unless we change our way of speaking to the US and recognising what is the US -- it is not the US of Obama, it is not the US of Clinton -- it is a different US and therefore our language must change not only to transactionality but also a language that can penetrate a group that has clearly identified a fringe white community in South Africa as their constituency," he said. 

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters on Monday (Mar 17) that South Africa's ambassador to the US United States was "unacceptable".  

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(With inputs from agencies)