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US ambassador-designate to South Africa Brent Bozell III has pledged to advance President Donald Trump\u2019s call for Afrikaners who \u201cwish to flee unjust racial discrimination\u201d to relocate to the United States \u2014 a statement likely to stir diplomatic unease in Pretoria and revive a long-running political flashpoint around race and land reform.<\/p>\n
Appearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, Bozell said that, if confirmed, he would make the issue one of his priorities as Washington\u2019s top envoy to Pretoria.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will support the president\u2019s call for the South African government to rescind its support for the expropriation of private property without compensation and will advance the president\u2019s invitation to Afrikaners who wish to flee unjust racial discrimination,\u201d Bozell told senators.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will explore how we can support the South African government in making sure all South Africans can thrive free from the threat of violence,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Bozell\u2019s statement appears to echo Trump\u2019s controversial 2018 social media post in which the then-president said he had asked his Secretary of State to \u201cclosely study South Africa\u2019s land and farm seizures and the large-scale killing of farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those comments \u2014 widely condemned in South Africa \u2014 drew sharp responses from the government and civil society, which accused Washington of amplifying far-right misinformation about \u201cwhite genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n
By aligning himself with Trump\u2019s earlier framing, Bozell\u2019s testimony revives a narrative that South Africa has spent years pushing back against \u2014 namely, that its land reform and racial redress programmes amount to persecution of white farmers.<\/p>\n
While South Africa has debated constitutional mechanisms to allow expropriation of land for redistribution, has previously reported that the government has not passed laws allowing wholesale seizure of private property without compensation.<\/em> The policy debate, rooted in efforts to address historic land dispossession, remains bound by the Constitution and subject to judicial oversight.<\/p>\n Officials and analysts have long rejected claims that white landowners face systemic discrimination or violence on racial grounds. The South African Police Service has consistently found that farm murders, while serious, form part of a broader trend of violent crime and are not racially targeted.<\/p>\n Bozell\u2019s comments, therefore, appear to conflate political debate over land reform with claims of state-sanctioned racial persecution \u2014 a position likely to draw pushback from Pretoria.<\/p>\n The remarks could reopen old tensions between South Africa and Washington, which flared during Trump\u2019s first term when similar allegations gained traction among far-right and white nationalist groups in the United States.<\/p>\n At the time, the South African government dismissed Trump\u2019s comments, calling them \u201cmisinformed and regrettable.\u201d<\/p>\n A government official in Pretoria told <\/em> on Friday that Bozell\u2019s statements \u201crisk reviving discredited myths about our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Bozell\u2019s mention of \u201csupporting the South African government in making sure all South Africans can thrive free from the threat of violence\u201d suggests an effort to temper his message, portraying it as concern for security rather than interference in domestic affairs.<\/p>\n However, his invocation of Trump\u2019s \u201cinvitation\u201d to Afrikaners places his testimony squarely within the rhetoric of Trump politics \u2014 where issues of race, migration and land in South Africa have become entangled with conservative culture-war narratives in the United States.<\/p>\n If confirmed, Bozell\u2019s arrival in Pretoria could mark a new phase in US\u2013South Africa relations \u2014 one in which domestic American politics and South Africa\u2019s post-apartheid transformation debates collide more directly than at any time in recent memory.<\/p>\n jonisayi.maromo@iol.co.za<\/strong><\/p>\n News<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US ambassador-designate to South Africa Brent Bozell III has pledged to advance President Donald Trump\u2019s call for Afrikaners who \u201cwish to flee unjust racial discrimination\u201d to relocate to the United States \u2014 a statement likely to stir diplomatic unease in Pretoria and revive a long-running political flashpoint around race and land reform. Appearing before the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[868,17624,3136,466,11689,12601,12518,6831,1629,51,8481],"class_list":["post-257254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-africa","tag-afrikaners","tag-ambassador","tag-call","tag-discrimination","tag-flee","tag-intensify","tag-pick","tag-racial","tag-south","tag-trumps"],"yoast_head":"\nPotential diplomatic friction<\/h2>\n
Balancing tone and priorities<\/h2>\n
Get your news on the go. Download the latest App for <\/span>Android <\/span>and <\/span>IOS <\/span>now.<\/em><\/h3>\n