US President Donald Trump’s administration has nominated Leo Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist and writer, to be the country’s ambassador to South Africa.
The nomination, published on a US government website, comes amid strained ties between the two nations.
Trump has been critical of South Africa on several fronts, including for a case it brought before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel, a top American ally, of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In an executive order, he halted US foreign assistance to South Africa and declared that the US refugee system would give priority to Afrikaner “victims of unjust racial discrimination”, claiming that South Africa was expropriating their land.
The South African authorities have not confiscated any private land since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Bozell is the founder of the Media Research Center, which says it works to “expose and counter the leftist bias of the national news media”, according to its website.
Many US companies are invested in South Africa, among them some of its biggest tech players, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and IBM. Indeed, both Microsoft and Google recently announced huge investments in data centre infrastructure in South Africa and recommitted themselves to the country.
Elon Musk
Bozell’s nomination also comes as tensions rise between South African-born billionaire Elon Musk and South Africa’s government 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 against the country’s black economic empowerment rules, which he has claimed are preventing SpaceX from launching Starlink services in South Africa.
Read: Starlink in race with Chinese rivals to dominate satellite internet
He has also waded into the country’s politics, frequently taking aim on his social media platform X at Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema. — Antony Sguazzin, with Jordan Fabian, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP, with additional reporting (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media
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