Will South Africa Accept the Incoming US Ambassador – And What Would the Consequences Be if It Doesn’t?

Relations between South Africa and the United States (US) have entered their most strained phase in decades, shaped by diplomatic expulsions, geopolitical misalignment, and mounting security friction. It is against this backdrop that Washington has chosen its next ambassador to Pretoria: Leo Brent Bozell III.

Bozell is not a conventional diplomat. He is a conservative activist, media entrepreneur, and long-time ideological operator within the American right. He founded the Media Research Center, an organisation dedicated to exposing what it views as liberal bias in US media, and built his career confronting progressive political institutions and amplifying conservative political messaging.

In the 1980s, while leading the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Bozell co-founded the “Coalition Against African National Congress (ANC) Terrorism”, which lobbied Washington against engagement with the ANC, branding it a Marxist organisation.

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Bozell pledged to press Pretoria on its International Court of Justice case against Israel, property rights and expropriation policy, trade barriers, and South Africa’s relationships with Iran, Russia, and China. President Donald Trump is clearly dispatching an ambassador aligned with his administration’s hardline posture toward Pretoria.

That posture reflects a relationship already under severe strain. One of the clearest ruptures came last year when South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled by the Trump administration after he made remarks criticising President Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Rasool had characterised MAGA as a white supremacist response to the shrinking percentage of white voters in the US. Pretoria has yet to appoint a replacement.

Diplomatic retaliation has since widened beyond the bilateral channel.

Last week, South Africa expelled Israel’s top diplomat, Ariel Seidman. The Common Sense reported that the expulsion followed objections from the African National Congress (ANC), which argued that an Israeli initiative to support poor communities in the Eastern Cape breached diplomatic protocol. Israel responded by expelling what South Africa called its ambassador to the State of Palestine.

Security flashpoints have further deepened mistrust with Washington.

South African authorities raided an Afrikaner asylum processing centre operated by American officials in Johannesburg, detaining staff and triggering warnings of consequences from the United States.

Pretoria also conducted joint naval exercises with Iran in Simonstown despite explicit US objections. The drills coincided with Tehran’s most brutal suppression of civilian dissent in years and took place just days before the US deployed a naval armada toward Iranian waters to pressure the regime into negotiating a nuclear agreement.

The Iran dimension has become particularly difficult for Pretoria to manage.

Historically, South Africa has acted as a diplomatic shield for Tehran in multilateral forums. But Iran’s network of allies and proxies has weakened under sustained Western and regional pressure. As that network contracts, South Africa risks becoming one of the last states offering Iran meaningful diplomatic cover.

That leaves Pretoria in a strategic bind. Continued support for Iran risks sharper fallout with Washington at a moment when America has dispatched a naval armada to the middle east. Pulling back risks undermining its long-held anti-imperialist foreign policy posture. Bozell will likely press this issue once in his post.

Economic leverage sits in the background. South Africa faces some of the highest US tariffs globally and still has no trade deal in place. It also risks exclusion from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which grants eligible African countries duty-free access to the US market.

All of this sharpens the stakes around Bozell’s accreditation.

South Africa now finds itself navigating simultaneous diplomatic strain with the US, escalating confrontation with Israel, and mounting pressure over Iran. Rejecting Trump’s envoy risks consequences Pretoria may struggle to absorb. Accepting him leaves South Africa facing a Trump hardliner in the heart of Pretoria.