US President Donald Trump’s administration has nominated Leo Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist and author, to be the nation’s ambassador to South Africa.
The nomination, printed on a US authorities web site, comes amid strained ties between the 2 nations.
Trump has been vital of South Africa on a number of fronts, together with for a case it introduced earlier than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice accusing Israel, a high American ally, of committing genocide towards Palestinians within the Gaza Strip.
In an govt order, he halted US international help to South Africa and declared that the US refugee system would give precedence to Afrikaner “victims of unjust racial discrimination”, claiming that South Africa was expropriating their land.
The South African authorities haven’t confiscated any personal land for the reason that finish of apartheid in 1994.
Bozell is the founding father of the Media Analysis Middle, which says it really works to “expose and counter the leftist bias of the nationwide information media”, in response to its web site.
Many US firms are invested in South Africa, amongst them a few of its greatest tech gamers, together with Microsoft, Amazon, Google and IBM. Certainly, each Microsoft and Google just lately introduced enormous investments in information centre infrastructure in South Africa and recommitted themselves to the nation.
Elon Musk
Bozell’s nomination additionally comes as tensions rise between South African-born billionaire Elon Musk and South Africa’s authorities over the licensing of Starlink.
Musk, who helped fund the election of US President Donald Trump and who now works in his administration, has railed towards the nation’s black financial empowerment guidelines, which he has claimed are stopping SpaceX from launching Starlink providers in South Africa.
Learn: Starlink in race with Chinese language rivals to dominate satellite tv for pc web
He has additionally waded into the nation’s politics, continuously taking goal on his social media platform X at Financial Freedom Fighters chief Julius Malema. — Antony Sguazzin, with Jordan Fabian, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP, with further reporting (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media
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