The right-wing, if not vile, Brent Leo Bozell presented his credentials to the government last Monday after having been confirmed as US ambassador to South Africa in December last year.
To start by stating the obvious, his long history of opposing the liberation struggle means this is someone who believed African, Indian and coloured people in South Africa weren’t deserving of democracy and equality. In his book, April 27 1994 was an error. Sustaining racial subjugation was a great idea.
About 11 years ago, when South Africans were mourning the death of our democracy’s founding father, Nelson Mandela, Bozell said the media must stop “mythologising” the global icon. Talk about peeing on our pain. At the time, this needlessly unpleasant comment from a then nobody surprised only a few, because Bozell was a member of the little-known, though concerning, “Coalition Against ANC Terrorism”.
In 1987, just before our 1990 breakthrough when the ANC, the PAC and the SACP were unbanned and Mandela was released, Bozell was irked that the then US secretary of state, George Schultz, met with ANC president Oliver Tambo in Washington.
The views of the top-ranking US emissary to Pretoria on our constitutional order are predictable and even more worrying. He opposes BEE, which he believes deters US investment. But it didn’t bother him that apartheid strangled investment and the economy. He believes the Trump administration lies about a “white genocide” and has pledged to place a “special focus” on the Afrikaner community during his tenure.
Some argue that Bozell’s views about South Africa date from years ago and should not be raised as an issue now; but so too were Mcebisi Jonas’s comments about President Donald Trump being a racist, a homophobe and a narcissistic right-winger. Why should Bozell get a break, but not Jonas, who President Cyril Ramaphosa had appointed as special envoy to Washington?
These are people who defend apartheid and colonialism, and perhaps want to bring back slavery while they’re at it
It gets worse. Bozell is not alone in holding these backward, anti-democratic views. His boss, secretary of state Marco Rubio, has little time for anti-colonial independence movements; he blames communism for the end of what he regards as the happy era of colonialism, and says Europe must not be “shackled by guilt and shame”.
“We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilisation, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.”
These are people who defend apartheid and colonialism, and perhaps want to bring back slavery while they’re at it. These are people who think the colonisation that unleashed much pain across the Global South was the work of a noble civilisation. How can there be no shame about this?
And how can Ramaphosa, in good conscience, keep quiet and still want us to believe he is pursuing Mandela’s legacy?
That the US could choose a Bozell to represent it, and that South Africa could hold its tongue about him, communicates a number of important things. Chief among them is that we have no self-respect. Whatever Mandela and other anti-apartheid and anti-colonial heroes taught us seems to have escaped us at a critical moment.
We may shout in parliament that we will not be bullied. Yet the arrival of Bozell is proof our words don’t mean much. Our diplomatic capitulation means we accept Bozell as a monument to our own self-disrespect.
Some have said that given the size of the US economy and our absolute need for access to that market, we must be prepared to take some body blows. That may include making peace with an apartheid-friendly ambassador.
Chris Rock, the US comedian, says in one of his stand-up shows, addressing African-Americans: “America is that uncle who molested you when you were a kid but then paid for your college.” The US may help South Africa sustain some jobs, but we can’t ignore the abuse that Bozell’s arrival represents. To look away is to smile while being suffocated.
It is a sorry state of affairs that Ramaphosa — who repeatedly cites lessons from Mandela, his mentor — can sheepishly accept Bozell without at least insisting on an apology to the people of South Africa for the part he played in supporting apartheid.
Mandela, for his part, told the then president George Bush where to get off when Bush thought he could dictate to South Africa how to relate to Cuba and other nations that offered us help.
Every nation has its villains. In Bozell, the US has sent us one of theirs.
What we do, how we respond to the provocation, is entirely up to us. We can squirm, scream at the top of our voice or simply acquiesce and remain silent. But the seeds of the destruction of what Mandela’s 27 years in jail mean for this country have been brought to our shore by the apartheid-friendly Bozell. Those Mandela entrusted with leadership have so far had little to say about it.
As Bozell starts engaging with South Africa’s domestic agenda, we must know we have been bullied and abused and are being forced to smile throughout. Each time this ambassador appears in a room, we must know that there stands a monument to disrespect.
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