United States President, Donald Trump. (Allison Robbert, Getty Images via AFP)
US President Donald Trump has nominated Brent Bozell III as Washington’s new ambassador to South Africa amid a historic diplomatic deep freeze between the two countries.
The nomination is one of many for several diplomatic postings around the world, published on the website of the US Congress.
It followed 10 days after Washington expelled South Africa’s ambassador Ebrahim Rasool after he told a webinar hosted by a local think tank that Trump was trying to create a “supremacist revolution” at home and abroad.
Bozell’s nomination must be confirmed by the US Senate.
He was named by Trump in January to head the US Agency for Global Media, an umbrella agency overseeing government-funded broadcasters including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. But on Friday Trump signed a decree dismantling the agency “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”. His nomination as its chief executive was formally withdrawn on Monday, according to the congressional website.
Bozell is a lifelong conservative activist and founder of the Media Research Centre, which campaigns against what it identifies to be liberal bias in the mainstream media, and has portrayed Trump in particular as the victim of such bias. He also founded a related organisation that seeks to counter liberal influence on American culture.
He was once deeply critical of Trump but shifted his stance in the latter part of his first term as president and claimed that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” after Trump lost to Joe Biden.
His son Leo Brent Bozell was among about 1 600 Trump supporters charged for storming the US Capitol on 6 January 6 2021. He was pardoned by the president in January.
There was no immediate comment from the department of international relations on Bozell’s nomination.
The former US ambassador to Pretoria Reuben Brigety announced his resignation in November last year, effective from January.
The deputy head of mission Dana Brown took over as acting chargé d’affaires, but resigned from the foreign service at the end of last month.
David Greene, the deputy chief of mission in Abuja, Nigeria, was named as chargé d’affaires, pending the appointment of a new ambassador.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said last week that he would not rush to name a new ambassador to Washington.
Privately, government officials have said he faced a complicated search for a candidate who could prove acceptable to a hostile administration that has demanded “policy change” from South Africa.
In February, Trump signed an executive decree suspending all aid to South Africa after accusing the government of fomenting terrorism, seizing white-owned land and enabling the persecution of the Afrikaner minority.
Ramaphosa’s office last week refuted suggestions by the US state department that the country was working with the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear arms.
