Donald Trump’s apartheid-defending ambassador to South Africa officially began serving in his role on Monday, as the administration continues to push racist lies about a “white genocide” in the nation.
Leo Brent Bozell III, the right-wing activist and censorship advocate whose son stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, submitted his letters of credence to South Africa’s government on Monday, officially commencing his term as ambassador.
When Trump’s nominee was confirmed by the Senate in December, my colleague Steve Benen wrote a blog that cited reporting from Talking Points Memo about Bozell’s past opposition to activists who fought against South Africa’s racist apartheid. The TPM report highlights how segregationist Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., boosted Bozell’s coalition in 1987, when it opposed the U.S. secretary of state meeting with a representative for the African National Congress.
Now, Bozell is officially the United States’ top envoy to the very nation whose Black freedom fighters he previously sought to spurn more than three decades ago. And he’s serving an administration that’s arguably more focused on advancing white supremacist views than any administration since the height of the Jim Crow era. (It’s also worth noting the number of wealthy, white Trump allies with ties to apartheid South Africa, such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.)
During South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House last year, Trump played a disinformation-filled video he falsely claimed showed how a “white genocide” was endangering South African farmers. Such propaganda has even underpinned the administration’s invitation to white South African immigrants to come as refugees to the U.S., even as (largely nonwhite) immigrants are being deported and others from heavily non-white countries are denied entry. Bozell, given his history, is likely to fit in with the Trump administration’s white supremacist foreign policy approach to South Africa, even as claims of white genocide continue to fall apart under scrutiny. This past Sunday, for example, “60 Minutes” aired a segment in which Anderson Cooper visited South Africa, where he heard from experts and multiple white farmers who confirmed that Trump’s claims about white genocide aren’t rooted in reality.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
