Trump’s new envoy arrives in South Africa with relations frayed

A conservative media critic picked by President Donald Trump to be US ambassador to South Africa has arrived to take up his post, the US embassy said Tuesday, with bilateral relations fractured over a range of issues. Washington and Pretoria are at odds over a series of international and domestic policies, from South Africa’s genocide case against Israel to Trump’s disputed claims that white Afrikaners are being persecuted. Brent Bozell, 70, needs to present his credentials to President Cyril Ramaphosa before officially taking up his post.

“I’m confirming that he’s in (the) country,” a US embassy official told AFP. Trump chose the right-wing Bozell for the job in March, soon after expelling South Africa’s ambassador on accusations that he was critical of Washington. Pretoria has yet to announce a successor.

Trump said at the time that Bozell “brings fearless tenacity, extraordinary experience, and vast knowledge to a nation that desperately needs it”. Bozell is founder of the Media Research Center, a non-profit that says it works to “expose and counter the leftist bias of the national news media”. A strong defender of Israel, he said at his Senate confirmation hearing in October that he would push Pretoria to end its genocide case.

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South Africa’s government filed the case with the International Court of Justice in 2023, alleging that Israel’s war on Gaza — which followed the attack by militants from Palestinian group Hamas — breached the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. Israel has denied that accusation. Bozell also told the Senators: “I will communicate our objections to South Africa’s geostrategic drift from non-alignment toward our competitors, including Russia, China and Iran.”

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