THE South African ambassador, who was expelled from the United States and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration, was welcomed home at an airport on Sunday by hundreds of supporters who sang songs praising him.

Crowds at Cape Town International Airport surrounded Ebrahim Rasool and his wife Rosieda as they emerged in the arrivals terminal in their home town.

“A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” Rasool told the supporters as he addressed them with a megaphone. “But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth like this, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity.”

“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets.

Mr Rasool was expelled for comments he made on a webinar that included him saying that the Make America Great Again movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct.”

Last month, the US president issued an executive order cutting all funding to South Africa, alleging its government is supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran, and pursuing anti-white policies at home.

“We don’t come here to say we are anti-American,” Mr Rasool said to the crowd. “We are not here to call on you to throw away our interests with the US.”