Trump envoy nomination provokes South Africa – MP

Nqobile Mhlongo has accused the US of an attempt to undermine Pretoria’s stance on Israel

Pretoria’s diplomatic tensions with Washington have worsened following the nomination of a new ambassador by US President Donald Trump, a South African legislator has said.

Speaking to RT, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party commissar Nqobile Mhlongo stated that the timing of Trump’s nomination of Leo Brent Bozell III – just days after South African ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was expelled from Washington – signals a strategic attempt to pressure Pretoria into compliance. 

“He’s doing it to provoke South Africa, but also to assert his authority,” she said.

READ MORE: The ghosts of apartheid triggered South Africa’s case against Israel in The Hague

In December 2023, Pretoria filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, citing decades of occupation, a maritime blockade, and systemic human rights violations in Gaza. Mhlongo argued that Trump’s move was a direct response to South Africa’s pro-Palestinian stance.  

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“He [Trump] wants to assert his authority, but also he wants to use the new ambassador, Bozell, to come to our soil and use the platform given to him as an ambassador to undermine the stance of South Africa when it comes to genocidal Israel,” the South African politician stated.

According to Mhlongo, tensions escalated when Trump issued executive orders demanding that South Africa reverse key domestic policies, including “the appellate bill, which is the basic education bill, ... the national health insurance bill, [and] the expropriation bill, which seeks to address injustices of the past in terms of land dispossession that happened during apartheid and colonialism in South Africa.”

She added that the US expects South Africa to surrender its sovereign policy decisions to Washington’s influence – something the EFF rejects outright. “We are not a satellite state of the US,” Mhlongo said. “South Africa is a sovereign state.”  

READ MORE: South Africa dismisses ‘white genocide’ claims

The US president recently halted all federal funding to South Africa over a controversial expropriation law, which Pretoria claims is intended to address historical racial disparities in land ownership. Trump has accused the government of seizing agricultural property belonging to white South Africans. People of European descent still own the majority of the country’s farmland, despite constituting only about 7% of the population.