TOM EATON

Story audio is generated using AI

On Wednesday, when US ambassador Brent Bozell scolded South Africa for engaging with Iran and China, some local officials responded with surprise and even anger. Which is a pity, because the humane response would have been to remember that there is something terribly and tragically wrong with Mr Bozell, and that the best approach is to smile, nod, toss another herring into his enclosure, and hurry away.

To be clear, when I refer to the terrible and tragic thing that’s wrong with Bozell, I’m not talking about white supremacy.

Yes, when he was working as a young right-wing activist in the 1980s Bozell tried his best to vilify the ANC-led liberation struggle, which means he willingly and knowingly tried to entrench or at least prolong the grip of white supremacy in South Africa.

But whether that still makes him a white supremacist in 2026 is another matter. After all, people change. Indeed, some of his senior colleagues have undergone immense changes over a far shorter time frame, for instance, JD Vance who described Donald Trump ― Bozell’s boss ― as “America’s Hitler”, or Marco Rubio, who called Trump a “con artist”.

Imagine how hollowed-out you must feel having to perform that script, where you tell South Africa that it’s naughty for ‘deepening ties with Beijing’ ― ties that amount to about $54bn in trade per years between South Africa and China ― when your own country does around $400bn of trade with China every year.

No, the terrible and tragic thing I was thinking of is the hole Mr Bozell finds himself in as an American ambassador in the historic skidmark that is the Trump era: a clown in a collapsing circus, having to perform an act dreamed up by a drunk and unhinged ringmaster.

I mean, just look at this tweet and imagine being the poor stooge who has to post it, as Bozell did on Wednesday:

“The Government of South Africa rolls out the red carpet for Iran’s deputy foreign minister, while deputy president Mashatile is in Beijing deepening ties with China. Pretoria calls this ‘non-alignment.’ We call it what it is: a choice. The South African people deserve an honest conversation about who their government is choosing to stand with. #NotSoNonAligned”

Imagine the skin-crawling ignominy of having to put your name to that; of telling South Africa that it can’t talk to Iran even as Bozell’s government talks endlessly to that murderous regime in order to work out how to pay it $300bn in surrender money.

Imagine how hollowed-out you must feel having to perform that script, where you tell South Africa that it’s naughty for “deepening ties with Beijing” ― ties that amount to about $54bn in trade per year between South Africa and China ― when your own country does around $400bn of trade with China every year.

To be fair to Bozell, he is right when he implies that governments make policy choices that show us clearly who they are. Bozell, for example, works for a government that has chosen to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He works for a government that has chosen to impede efforts to expose a gigantic paedophile ring, causing some to suggest that it has chosen to actively shelter paedophiles.

He works for a government that has chosen to both ignore and accelerate catastrophic climate change. Yes, in that respect, Bozell is entirely correct: his government has made choices that show us exactly what it is.

As for the need to have an honest conversation in this country, well, the good news is that we can, because we still have freedom of speech in South Africa. After all, this isn’t the US, where a few cronies of the president own swathes of media companies, where journalists are excluded from press conferences because they refuse to ask softball questions, or where satirists are fired from their jobs for criticising fascism and white supremacy.

Yes, we have honest conversations all the time. We might even have one about Brent Bozell. And when we do, I hope we talk about him gently, and then toss him another herring and wander away.