South Africa summoned US ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III again, deepening a diplomatic rift with Washington in the same week that one of the country’s biggest companies lost ground in a US terrorism lawsuit.
Bozell — first summoned in March over his remarks on the “Kill the Boer” chant — has more recently been attacking Pretoria’s response to US President Donald Trump’s demands on land, race policy, farm murders, and hate speech. South Africa has repeatedly rejected the demands as interference in domestic affairs, arguing its race-based policies are constitutional redress in a country where the Black majority was left destitute by apartheid policies.
The clash coincides with Johannesburg-based MTN Group, Africa’s largest telecoms company, failing to clear a key hurdle in a New York lawsuit brought by families of US citizens killed or injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. They allege MTN aided the Taliban through protection payments and switched off its towers at the request of the Islamist group, and assisted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Iraq through its stake in Irancell.