South Africa said on Monday it has accepted a conservative envoy highly critical of Pretoria amid deteriorating relations with President Donald Trump as the country's new US ambassador.
The two countries' governments have been at odds over a range of international and domestic policies, including South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the expulsion of the US ambassador to Pretoria in March.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has “accepted” right-wing media critic and ardent defender of Israel Brent Bozell, an official told AFP, adding that an official recognition ceremony with President Cyril Ramaphosa will take place in April.
A US State Department official told AFP that Bozell “looks forward to assuming his position and representing an America First foreign policy”.
Trump selected Bozell for the post in March last year, saying he would bring “fearless tenacity, extraordinary experience and vast knowledge to a country that desperately needs it”.
Bozell said at his Senate confirmation hearing in October that he would pressure Pretoria to drop the genocide case against Israel.
He said he would “convey our objections to South Africa's geostrategic divergence”, citing its ties with Russia, China and Iran, with whom Pretoria held naval exercises in January.
He also told senators he would promote Trump's offer to grant refugee status to the white Afrikaner minority, repeating the US administration's baseless claims that white South Africans are victims of discrimination and even “genocide” under the post-apartheid government.
– Mandela 'terrorist' –
A leader on the American right, Bozell is the founder of the Media Research Center, a nonprofit group that says it works to “expose and counter the leftist bias of the national news media.”
In 1990, when Nelson Mandela visited the US after being freed from prison for his fight against apartheid, Bozell's non-profit organization criticized the media for “never referring to Mandela as a subversive or a terrorist”.
At his October Senate hearing, Bozell justified this comment by the fact that Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) was at the time “aligned with the Soviet Union”, adding that Mandela today was the person for whom he had “the greatest respect” in South Africa.
Bozell's son Leo Brent Bozell IV was one of nearly 1,600 people convicted and sentenced for their roles in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. When Trump took office last year, the President pardoned him.
CLV-JCB/RLP