Donald Trump has nominated a conservative, pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa, at a time when the relationship between the two countries is at a nadir.
Leo Brent Bozell III founded the Media Research Center – whose website states it is “a blog site designed to broadcast conservative values, culture, and politics [and] 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 January 6 2021 Capitol riots. He was released in January as part of Trump’s mass pardon.
The 69-year-old’s nomination, which needs to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, comes after South Africa’s ambassador to Washington Ebrahim Rasool was expelled earlier this month and 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” 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, who 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 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, then US ambassador Reuben Brigety accused South Africa of supplying Russia with arms.
Things soured further when South Africa brought a case accusing US ally Israel 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.
“There is just an absolute disagreement on the way in which Ramaphosa and Trump see the world,” said Ziyanda Stuurman, an independent political risk analyst.
Trump’s executive order criticised South Africa for its case against Israel.
It also claimed a law signed in January that allows land to be expropriated with “nil compensation” in limited circumstances 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), while black people 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, a former ambassador to Ireland and MP for the African National Congress, the former liberation movement that has led all South African government’s 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 who is leading Trump’s bid to slash the size of the US government. Musk has been increasingly critical of South Africa, with Trump echoing some of his statements.
Musk, who wants to expand his satellite internet business Starlink globally, has repeatedly railed against a requirement that telecoms investors cede 30% of equity in their South African subsidiary to minority ethnic owners.
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, a director at risk consultancy Signal Risk: “I would focus on the commercial rather than the moral aspects.”
