President Donald Trump appoints new South African ambassador

President Donald Trump on Thursday, March 27, 2025, has nominated a new South African ambassador.

Leo Brent Bozell III is a conservative, pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa.

The 69-year-old’s nomination Acomes at a time when the relationship between the two countries is at its lowest point.

Leo Brent Bozell III founded the Media Research Center.

The center’s website states it is “a blog site designed to broadcast conservative values, culture, and politics.

It is also designed to expose liberal media bias” – in 1987.

His son Leo Brent Bozell IV was sentenced to 45 months in prison in May 2024 for assaulting police and smashing windows in the 6 January 2021 Capitol riots.

He was released in January as part of Trump’s mass pardon.

According to the BBC, Bozell III’s nomination needs to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.

This comes after South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled earlier this month.

It also comes amid US claims that South Africa is discriminating against its white minority.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, had called Rasool “a race-baiting politician who hates America.”

This was after Rasool told a thinktank that Trump’s Maga movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct”.

In February, Trump signed an executive order cutting aid to South Africa, accusing it of racial discrimination against white Afrikaners.

The Afrikaners ruled the country during apartheid. The order also offered them refugee resettlement.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, told reporters on Tuesday he would appoint a “top-class” replacement for Rasool.

He added that US funding cuts were “entirely within their own right … and in many ways a wake-up call … [to be] more self-reliant.”

The US-South Africa relationship had worsened under the previous US president, Joe Biden, after South Africa refused to take sides when Russia invaded Ukraine.

In 2023, the then US ambassador, Reuben Brigety, accused South Africa of supplying Russia with arms.

Things soured further when South Africa brought a case accusing Israel, a US ally, of genocide in Gaza at the international court of justice.

The UN court ordered Israel to take measures to prevent potential acts of genocide.

Israel, which reacted furiously to the allegations, has until July to answer South Africa’s case.

However, Trump’s overturning of norms and spreading of misinformation about South Africa has catapulted the relationship into new territory.

Ziyanda Stuurman, an independent political risk analyst said,

“There is just an absolute disagreement on the way in which Ramaphosa and Trump see the world.”

Trump’s executive order criticised South Africa for its case against Israel.

It also claimed that there was a law signed in January allowing land to be expropriated with “nil compensation” in limited circumstances.

This law enabled South Africa to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property”.

The South African government has said that the US has similar laws allowing the government to take over land for public purposes.

Conservative Afrikaner groups that have the ear of Trump allies have promoted conspiracy theories of a “white genocide” in South Africa.

Meanwhile, land and wealth remain concentrated among white South Africans, who make up 7% of the population (about half Afrikaans).

The black people are said to represent 81%.

“How do you respond when it seems like the main motivation for the breakdown of the relationship is based on a complete and utter untruth, ie that whites are being treated badly,” said Melanie Verwoerd.

Verwoerd is a former ambassador to Ireland and MP for the African National Congress (ANC).

ANC is the former liberation movement that has led all South African governments since the end of white minority rule.

South Africa’s history of successful negotiations to end apartheid, in which Ramaphosa led the ANC delegation, were cause for hope in improving relations, though, she said.

Some analysts suggest South Africa could build bridges through Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire.

Musk is said to be leading Trump’s bid to slash the size of the US government.

He has been increasingly critical of South Africa, with Trump echoing some of his statements.

Musk has repeatedly railed against a requirement that telecoms investors cede 30% of equity in their South African subsidiary to black owners.

Online media reports suggest that he wants to expand his satellite internet business Starlink globally,

On Monday, Musk posted on X: “The legacy media never mentions white genocide in South Africa.”

Last week, he criticised the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party for singing the controversial Kill the Boers song at political rallies.

A South African court ruled in 2022 that the song was not meant to be taken literally.

Dropping the equity condition could be part of a “pragmatic” deal that doesn’t compromise sovereignty, said Ronak Gopaldas.

Gopaldas, a director at risk consultancy Signal Risk said,

“I would focus on the commercial rather than the moral aspects.”

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