After a year of acrimony between the US and South Africa, Donald Trump’s ambassador-designate arrived in Pretoria this month: a rightwing activist who in the 1980s opposed Washington working with the African National Congress to end apartheid.
Leo Brent Bozell III, the 70-year-old scion of a prominent conservative family, has spent his career campaigning against perceived US media bias and opposing “the decline of moral values” in America.
He landed with relations at a nadir, in part due to Trump peddling a conspiracy theory that white Afrikaner farmers are facing land expulsions and genocide under the country’s democratic, multiracial government.
Trump has surrounded himself with unofficial advisers who have formative experiences in apartheid South Africa, including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks.
On top of the baseless genocide claims, Washington has been riled by South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel as well as its cozy relations with Iran and Russia. Relations also suffered under the Biden administration over South Africa’s military ties with Moscow.
Trump has introduced tariffs of up to 30 per cent on South Africa, one of the higher rates in the world. He has said Pretoria will not be invited to this year’s G20 in Miami over a spat about the handover ceremony when South Africa hosted the event last year.
When President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House last year, Trump showed him footage of what he falsely claimed were mass graves of white farmers.
Bozell will have little experience in South Africa policy to lean on when navigating the fraught relationship.
He most notably dipped his toe in the subject in 1987 when joining a “Coalition Against ANC Terrorism”. The campaign was an unsuccessful effort to stop the US engaging with the ANC party, which had a militant wing but brought South Africa out of apartheid and still leads the ruling coalition under Ramaphosa.
“I would estimate a worsening of diplomatic relations initially,” said Menzi Ndhlovu, lead country analyst at Signal Risk. “He’s going to want quick wins at the outset to prove himself and he needs to deliver. So what does that look like? He’s standing on South Africa’s neck.”
The US State Department and South Africa’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
In a tense confirmation hearing, Bozell said his top priorities were to press South Africa to end its ICJ case against Israel and to tackle its relationships with China, Russia and Iran.
He also said he will encourage white Afrikaner farmers to apply for refugee status in the US and refused to comment on Trump’s genocide claims or whether Washington should have a race-based immigration policy.
South Africa’s government has increasingly pushed back on US pressure over these issues. Last month, it expelled Israel’s top diplomat in the country, and in December officials shut down a centre set up by the US to process Afrikaner “refugees”.
Bozell’s family has been a fixture of American rightwing thought for decades.
His father was a speechwriter for firebrand senators Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater and ran a conservative Catholic magazine, while his maternal uncles included conservative public intellectual William F. Buckley and rightwing Senator James L. Buckley.
Bozell came to prominence as head of “decency” watchdog the Parents Television Council and press monitor the Media Research Center. In 2004, he famously helped whip up a storm of outrage when Janet Jackson accidentally flashed a nipple during her Super Bowl half-time performance.
When Trump became the Republican frontrunner in the 2016 primary, Bozell was a critic, writing that he “might be the greatest charlatan of them all”. Two years later, he was attacking the media’s coverage of Trump: “They loathe this man . . . if he finds a cure for cancer, they’ll attack him for not curing Aids.”
Just after Trump took office, he pardoned Bozell’s youngest son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, who was given a nearly four-year sentence for storming the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. Bozell publicly thanked the president, saying his 44-year-old son and several of his “J6 buddies” had been “released from captivity”.
“Bozell certainly is par for the course for a Trump ambassador. The fact that he has little experience of Africa or diplomacy is characteristic — but not helpful,” said Nicholas Westcott, a former British diplomat and professor of diplomacy at Soas University of London.
South African officials have, at least publicly, welcomed his appointment, hoping a new channel of communication will thaw relations — including by helping debunk some of Trump’s myths.
“The feeling . . . is pretty warm, and that he will finally get to experience that much of what he has been saying about South Africa is a lie,” a presidential adviser told the FT.
The Freedom Front Plus, a rightwing Afrikaner interest group that is a minority party in the governing 10-party coalition, said his appointment was a “welcome development”. “He is known for his unshakeable commitment to traditional values and his blatant criticism of liberal media prejudice,” it said.
Pretoria has not had a direct line to Washington since March last year, when its previous ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was expelled after accusing Trump of “mobilising a supremacism”.
However, it is far from guaranteed that Bozell will be a straightforward intermediary, observers said.
“I don’t think he’s coming here to test whether the president is right,” said one regional diplomat. “It’s not a particularly good idea to tell this president that he’s wrong.”
