Trump Envoy Blasts South Africa Over ‘Kill’ Chant, Warns It’s Drifting Toward US Foes

The U.S. ambassador to South Africa has sharply criticized President Cyril Ramaphosa, telling News Outlet: “You’ve got a president of South Africa who refuses to condemn an incitement to kill.”

Ambassador L. Brent Bozell III made the forceful remarks during an exclusive interview with News Outlet, after being summoned to South Africa’s foreign ministry the previous week and accused of “undiplomatic conduct.”

The meeting marked the third démarche—a formal diplomatic rebuke—Bozell has received from Pretoria in the nine months since taking up his post. South Africa has criticized him for echoing President Trump’s condemnation of the country’s policies and public statements. Bozell is a former Fox News contributor and the founder of the Media Research Center, the largest conservative media watchdog.

Bozell has repeatedly pressed South Africa to address concerns raised by President Trump during a tense Oval Office meeting with Ramaphosa 16 months ago. Those issues include alleged race-based discrimination, claims involving the murder and torture of farmers, proposals for uncompensated land seizures and the incitement of violence against minority groups.

The ambassador said South Africa has ignored three of the five specific “asks” made by the Trump administration.

Among the administration’s top demands is that Ramaphosa prevent people in South Africa from chanting, “Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!” Merriam-Webster defines a Boer as “a South African of Dutch or Huguenot descent.” Ramaphosa has said he cannot prohibit the slogan because South Africa’s Supreme Court has cleared it for use.

“You’ve got a president of South Africa who refuses to condemn an incitement to kill,” Bozell told News Outlet.

He continued: “You’ve got a government that has said it’s not going to do any more for the Afrikaner rural community, and it’s got a government that’s saying, no, your mining has to go through race-based programs. We’re not going to allow your investments to go the way everyone else has been allowed to go.”

“Those were three strikes and you’re out as far as we were concerned,” Bozell said.

“Ask 100% of the world if ‘kill the farmer, kill the Boer’ isn’t hate speech,” he added. “If that isn’t hate speech, I don’t know what hate speech is: inciting people to commit murder. So the answer we’ve gotten is, well, the court said it isn’t. To which our response is, look, in the United States, the president can disagree with the court—and does about every five minutes—because that’s what you do in a democracy when you disagree with something.”

Bozell added: “So, to say, well, you can’t do it because the court said it’s not, you know, that’s poppycock. If President Ramaphosa wants to, he can do it. It’s just as simple as that.”

The ambassador emphasized the issue, asking: “How hard is it to say this chant—where some, where people do it, 50,000 people in the stadium jump up and down, pantomiming guns, shooting people—how hard is it to say, stop it? This is awful that anybody would be inciting people to kill.”

Analysts say South Africa is moving increasingly closer to Iran, Russia, China and even Cuba. The African National Congress, or ANC, which governs the country as part of the so-called “government of national unity,” has also hosted the terror group Hamas.

The administration is closely monitoring that shift. Trump recently met with Bozell again in Washington, and the ambassador told News Outlet that the president is “perhaps most of all” concerned that South Africa has “been systematically leaving the non-alignment space and moving closer and closer to our adversaries.”

Speaking about South Africa, Bozell said: “There are people who are living in the glory days of the Soviet Union, and they want to go back to the good old days of communism. Why are they still working with Cuba?”

Digging deeper, Bozell asked, “Why are they working with Iran and Hamas terror organizations? What’s Russia doing for them? What’s China doing for them? This is bad news when they’re going in that direction. What we’re saying is simply do what you’ve always done. Have a non-aligned with both sides. We’ll live with that.”

The ambassador stressed that the U.S. wants to make dynamic business with South Africa on mining, particularly on critical or rare earth minerals. He stated, “We’re not going to do what the Chinese do. They come in, they take the ore, they take it to China, they benefit [from] it and they make a pile of money. We’re saying to South Africa, we’ll come in, we’ll do the mining, we’ll do it right there in South Africa.”

He continued,”South Africa gets the money, not the Chinese. We bring in the technology that they could never have. We’ve created hundreds of thousands of jobs. We’re saying we could create more and more and more at a time when they desperately need it, but it will be good for us as well. This is the partnership we want.”

Elon Musk and his Starlink satellite internet company are one of many U.S. companies which want to enter South Africa. But in the telecommunications and mining fields, the government insists that 30% of foreign company ownership must be given to black local entrepreneurs.

Bozell says this is problematical for the U.S. “There are literally billions of dollars from American firms and American government investments ready to go into mining, but it’s not going to go there so long as you have these race-based avenues they must go through. In telecom, Elon Musk has said he will put Starlink in 500 schools and pay for it in perpetuity if he’s allowed to go this way. And they said, “No, we want 30% of your company. So yeah, of course it’s hurting.”

On Friday, a senior official at South Africa’s Department of International Relations – the country’s foreign ministry – confirmed to News Outlet that they demarched Ambassador Bozell for a third time, adding, “This is a record. He was called in to explain his undiplomatic conduct. The issues related to the bilateral relations between the two countries are a subject of ongoing discussions. There is commitment from both sides to resolve the outstanding matters. South Africa values the relationship with the USA. It is a mutually beneficial partnership”.

Also, Friday, a State Department spokesperson told News Outlet, “We are not interested in diplomatic maneuvering, procedural delays, or dialogue for dialogue’s sake. The ball is now squarely in the Government of South Africa’s court to outline the relationship it wants with the United States and respond accordingly to President Trump’s executive order.”

Still, Bozell looks to the future of the U.S. – South Africa relationship with guarded optimism. “Look, temperatures can go up, but I want their temperature to go down too. You know, we want this partnership. We want to figure this out. It’s good for South Africa. It’s good for the United States of America. Temperatures need to go down, and we got to figure it out.”