SA set for a rougher ride under Trump’s new ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III

South Africa’s already rocky relations with the US are likely to get rockier with President Donald Trump’s nomination this week of the conservative media critic and ardent pro-Israeli sympathiser Leo Brent Bozell III as his ambassador to South Africa.

It has emerged that Trump offered Bozell the Pretoria post as a consolation prize after nominating him to head the US Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of Voice of America and other government-owned media operations. But he then shut the agency down, along with many other branches of the US government attacked by the chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

On Thursday morning, Trump confirmed on social media that he had officially appointed Bozell.

“I am pleased to announce that Brent Bozell will be our next United States Ambassador to South Africa. Brent is the Founder of the Media Research Center, which has exposed Fake News hypocrites for many years. Brent brings fearless tenacity, extraordinary experience, and vast knowledge to a Nation that desperately needs it. Congratulations Brent!”

Bozell has no discernible experience or interest in South Africa or Africa.

“I see him not quite succeeding as an ambassador, but being more of a rabble-rouser all the time, kind of just throwing everything at the ANC and the South African government,” Bob Wekesa, the director of Wits University’s African Centre for the Study of the United States, told Daily Maverick.

Bozell founded and heads the Virginia-based Media Research Center which bills itself as “the largest media watchdog organization in America” and claims that since its founding in 1987, it “has worked successfully to expose and counter the leftist bias of the national news media” and “leads the conservative movement in combatting the left’s efforts to manipulate the electoral process, silence opposing voices online, and undermine American values”.

Apart from attacking what he regards as the “liberal mainstream media” and liberals in general, Bozell is a fierce supporter of Israel.

In a typical post after the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023 when Israel’s massive retaliation against Gaza provoked anti-Israel protests in the US, he tweeted: “There are way more of us supporting Israel than of the crazy, pro-Hamas protestors. But you wouldn’t know that from watching the leftist media.”

On 4 January, he posted on X: “Not satisfied with the damage he has done to the U.S. economy, our justice system, and our standing in the world, Joe Biden continues to thumb his nose at the American people on his way out the door. Giving a medal to America-hating, Hamas-loving George Soros is beyond the [pale]”.

Soros is the philanthropist who has donated vast amounts of money to liberal causes across the world, including South Africa, largely through the Open Society Foundation.

Bozell’s son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, from Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was convicted in September 2023 of 10 charges, including four felonies, for his participation in the storming by conservatives of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 to try to forcibly prevent the official ratification of Joe Biden as the winner of the November 2020 presidential elections.

On 17 May 2024, Bozell was sentenced to 45 months in prison, three months of supervised release and $4,729 in restitution on these charges, according to a statement by the Department of Justice.

He was released on 20 January this year after Trump’s blanket pardon of all those convicted for participation in the assault on the Capitol.

Anthony Carroll, non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, DC, notes that “while Mr Bozell has no discernible background in Africa, that may not be a bad thing so long as he approaches the assignment with an open mind. His career has concentrated on media and he will probably be pleasantly surprised by the robust media environment here in South Africa.”

Wekesa said he believed Trump’s nomination of Bozell “says a couple of very explicit and straightforward things about the intentions of Donald Trump and the US administration more broadly.

“One, is that this is a person that is going to try to force or to at least lean on South Africa to take a less anti-Israel position and more of a position that aligns with the US interests, which is support for Israel and abandoning the Palestinian cause.”

He thought Bozell would try to persuade South Africa to abandon its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and also its support for the International Criminal Court cases against Israeli leaders.

‘Let’s clash’

This would cause a clash with the ANC, “and basically the appointment seems to suggest something like: ‘let’s clash, bring it on,’ and thereafter there will be very little of diplomacy there because this is a person who leans on one side of this global debate on the Middle East more broadly”.

Wekesa also thought Trump was rewarding his base, noting how Bozell’s son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, had been convicted on several charges and sentenced to 45 months in prison for being among the pro-Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 to try to prevent Congress certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 elections. In January, Trump pardoned Bozell and all the others who stormed the Capitol.

Wekesa thought Bozell would amplify the fake narrative of “white genocide” in South Africa that was being disseminated by Trump and Musk.  

“In this choice, the US is not interested in rapprochement with SA at all. And as I know some of the radical ANC folks, they will jump straight into the fray. Tough times for [President Cyril] Ramaphosa overall.”

Ramaphosa is meanwhile mulling over the difficult choice of an ambassador to the US to replace Ebrahim Rasool, who was expelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on 14 March for stating that Trump was a “supremacist”. Again this week, Ramaphosa stressed that it was important to maintain good relations with the US, South Africa’s second-largest trading partner.

With his long media background, Bozell seemed about right to head the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) which oversaw six media entities: two federal organisations — the Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which in turn oversees Radio and TV Martí — and five non-profit organisations, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, the Open Technology Fund and the Frontline Media Fund, which received grants from USAGM.

Valued by democrats

These media organisations transmitted a pro-US narrative to the world and were valued by democrats and liberals in many authoritarian states for presenting a picture of the outside world and were not regarded as pure propaganda instruments.

On 23 January, Bozell posted on X: “I am honored to be chosen by President Trump to serve as the next CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. There is lots of work to be done. I look forward to meeting with Senators ahead of my confirmation hearing to explore how best to ensure the priorities of the President.”

On 6 March, Bozell met Republican Senator Mike Lee, who posted: “Great meeting with @BrentBozell, a true patriot who was tackling media lies and leftist bias before it became our national pastime! President Trump could not have picked a better CEO for @USAGMgov.”

But just over a week later, on 14 March, Trump issued an executive order defunding USAGM, effectively killing it off, along with the Voice of America and the other media organisations which fell under it.

That sort of confusion is typical of the Trump’s administration’s wholesale decimation of government agencies and departments.

Trump’s termination of them has been lamented as a major blow to US soft power.

Federal workers, journalists and labour unions have filed a lawsuit against USAGM over the shuttering of the agency by the Trump administration, seeking immediate relief to reverse it.

Joel Pollak, the SA-born, US-based conservative commentator and ardent Trump supporter who some had tipped to be Trump’s choice for ambassador to SA, on Tuesday posted on X: “Best of luck to @BrentBozell!” DM