US President Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for ambassador to South Africa offered support for disputed claims that thousands of white Afrikaner farmers are under attack in Africa’s most industrialized nation, a row that has come to dominate fraying ties between the two countries.
At a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, nominee Leo Brent Bozell — a longtime conservative media critic with no diplomatic background — declined to accept Democratic senators’ framing of Trump’s false genocide claims as “legally and morally absurd.” He also refused to directly answer questions suggesting the US should not have a refugee policy based on race: “In South Africa, you have thousands of attacks that have taken place against white farmers,” he said. Washington is reportedly planning to allow 7,000 white Afrikaners into the country, out of a total of just 7,500 refugees this year.
The “false narrative” of a genocide from the US has become a major sticking point in ongoing trade talks between Pretoria and Washington, South Africa’s foreign minister said this week. Bozell’s likely confirmation by a Republican-majority senate is expected to become another friction point. In March, Washington expelled Pretoria’s ambassador to the US for criticizing Trump during a webinar, and in May, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was ambushed by Trump in the Oval Office with claims of “white genocide.”