South Africa has accepted conservative media critic Brent Bozell as the new United States ambassador to the country, the foreign affairs department confirmed on Monday, despite his outspoken criticism of Pretoria’s policies.
An official told AFP the department had accepted Bozell’s appointment, with an official accreditation ceremony with President Cyril Ramaphosa scheduled for April.
The appointment comes amid increasingly strained relations between the two governments over several international and domestic issues. These include South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and disputes over Pretoria’s foreign policy alignments. In March, Washington expelled South Africa’s ambassador.
A US state department official told AFP that Bozell “looks forward to taking up his post and representing America First foreign policy”.
Trump nominated Bozell for the position in March last year, describing him as someone who would bring “fearless tenacity, extraordinary experience, and vast knowledge to a nation that desperately needs it”.
At his Senate confirmation hearing in October, Bozell outlined several contentious policy positions he intends to pursue. He said he would push South Africa to end its genocide case against Israel and would “communicate our objections to South Africa’s geostrategic drift”, citing the country’s relations with Russia, China and Iran. Pretoria conducted naval exercises with these nations in January.
Bozell also told senators he would promote Trump’s offer of refugee status to the white Afrikaner minority, repeating claims by the US administration that white South Africans face discrimination and “genocide” under the post-apartheid government. These claims remain unfounded.
Right-wing media figure
Bozell is the founder of the Media Research Center, a non-profit organisation that says it works to “expose and counter the leftist bias of the national news media”.
In 1990, when Nelson Mandela toured the US after being released from prison for his fight against apartheid, Bozell’s organisation criticised the media for having “never referred to Mandela as a saboteur or terrorist”.
At his October Senate hearing, Bozell defended the comment by noting that Mandela’s African National Congress was at the time “aligned with the Soviet Union”. He added that Mandela was today the person he had “the most respect for” in South Africa.
Bozell’s son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, was among almost 1 600 people convicted and sentenced for their role in the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters. He was pardoned by the president when Trump took office last year.
