The United States has been on a barbarous tirade as it continues attempts to assert its dominance around the globe. From Venezuela, to Iran and the constant lingering threats towards Cuba, the U.S. government remains steadfast in its aggressive imperialist efforts of maintaining the “Western superpower.” In yet another endeavor to preserve control over other countries, Donald Trump has appointed hyper-conservative Leo Brent Bozell III as the South African U.S. ambassador, replacing Rueben Brigety who was appointed by former president Joe Biden.
Who is Leo Brent Bozell III?
Bozell is a prominent figure in American right wing politics and a staunch supporter of Israel. Throughout the 1980s, Bozell was part of the “Coalition Against ANC Terrorism” which sought to oppose any negotiations with the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC), led by Nelson Mandela at the time. Bozell, while never having served in the foreign service, nor ever living on the African continent, has set some ambitious goals with his newly appointed role as ambassador.
Unsurprisingly, he has indicated that he aims to apply pressure on South African authorities to withdraw the lawsuit against Israel for genocide in Gaza before the International Court of Justice. He also plans to tackle what has been labeled South Africa’s “geostrategic drift” towards Washington’s international rivals, which includes Russia, China, and Iran.
Trump’s confirmation of Bozellarises after a year of diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and South Africa. In February 2025, Trump froze aid to South Africa after alleging that the ANC-led government was “mistreating the country’s white minority”. This was sparked by the implementation of the Expropriation Act, which was designed to enable the state to reclaim land in the public interest, with the agreement of current private landowners. It was signed in an effort to rectify longstanding disparities in land ownership. Trump accused the reform of allowing property to be seized from white farmers.
In March 2025, the South African ambassador to the US was recalled to Pretoria after describing American policy as “white supremacy”. Following that, in November of 2025, the US administration refused to participate in the G20 summit in Johannesburg and has prohibited South Africa from attending the next upcoming G20 summit, which is to be held in the United States later this year.
Trump’s white supremacist and anti-immigrant agenda ramps up to the benefit of Afrikaners
As part of a US “humanitarian initiative” and backlash to the South African land reform, the White House aims to process 4,500 refugee applications per month for white South Africans, which far exceeds Trump’s stated refugee cap. To support this massive undertaking, they are installing trailers on embassy property in Pretoria and are hastily ramping up South African admissions while refugee applications from other areas of the world have been severely curtailed. Trump said that the US would only admit 7,500 refugees from around the world for the 2026 fiscal year, while a much higher cap of 40,000 to 60,000 was discussed internally last year. Under a program launched in May 2025, 2,000 South Africans have entered the US as refugees as of Jan. 31, and the pace has only continued to pick up in recent months.
After taking office in 2025, Trump ordered a halt to refugee admissions as part of his disgusting and racist “crackdown” on legal and illegal immigration. Just weeks later, he launched a resolution to bring in white South Africans or Afrikaner ethnicity as refugees, asserting that they had been “violently persecuted in the majority-Black country”. This is yet another clear and blatant effort to push racist and discriminatory rhetoric against black and brown immigrants in the US. The flagrant contradiction of calling Haitian, Somali, and Latino immigrants “murderous criminals” while simultaneously claiming that white South Africans or Afrikaners, who have disproportionately owned and operated more land and resources in the country, have faced oppression and unfair treatment in their homeland.
The South African government prior to the ANC assuming leadership in 1994, had a long history of colonial rule and apartheid which was fully backed by Western imperialist powers. For decades, apartheid South Africa attempted to silence and stamp out any independence movements and maintain authority over the southern African region. By using military interventions, the South African apartheid government targeted anti-colonial and socialist movements pursuing liberation from Portuguese and British colonialism. The apartheid government even went as far as manufacturing famine, creating sanctions, massacring civilians, and completely isolating South Africa on the world stage.
Appointing Bozell as the U.S. ambassador is a strategic push to further advance a racist and white-supremacist narrative that white South Africans and Afrikaners are victims of an oppressive and arbitrary government. Black South Africans who occupy that same region face disproportionate rates of land ownership, access to resources, and face extreme levels of poverty in comparison. Rejecting and opposing this narrative is imperative to expanding solidarity for not only the Black South African people, but also black and brown immigrant communities right here in the United States that are facing ruthless, brutal attacks from the ruling class’s white-supremacist and anti-immigrant campaign.
Feature image: Leo Brent Bozell III. Photographer: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto/AP Photo.
