L Brent Bozell, the new American ambassador to this country, has been censured for telling a gathering on Tuesday for showing contempt towards South Africa’s courts. But in his defence, I would humbly submit that Bozell doesn’t care what American courts say either.
Of course, I understand why many South Africans wouldn’t want to give Bozell the benefit of any doubt. After all, this is the same man who, in 1987, led a conservative lobby group trying to demonise the ANC as a “terrorist” organisation and pressure the Reagan administration not to meet with Oliver Tambo.
In other words, by working against the organisation leading the anti-apartheid struggle, Bozell actively and publicly strove to prolong white supremacist autocracy in South Africa.
I also understand why Dirco took the step of issuing a demarche — a formal reprimand — to Bozell for saying about the ‘Shoot the Boer’ chant: “I’m sorry, I don’t care what your courts say, it’s hate speech.”
Bozell is perfectly entitled to say that in private, whether to his January 6th insurrectionist son or to the hairdresser putting the finishing touches on that magnificent tribute to the early 1980s, but ambassadors don’t get to publicly slag off the courts of the countries they’ve been dispatched to.
After that bit of moral self-lobotomy, it must have been easy not to care about the 2024 court ruling when Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records: if sexual abuse couldn’t nudge the Bozell needle, why would a conviction for a bit of light fraud change anything?
But, for the sake of balance, I think it’s important for Bozell’s local critics to take a breath and remember that, while he doesn’t care about South African court rulings, he clearly feels exactly the same about many court rulings in his own country.
For example, American courts ruled overwhelmingly that there is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden, rulings that Donald Trump has continued to ignore or deny for years. If Bozell respected or even cared about courts’ rulings, you’d think he might have thought twice before accepting the job of ambassador from Trump, and yet here he is, representing a president who has defined himself by ignoring legal rulings.
In 2023, likewise, courts found Trump guilty of sexually abusing E Jean Carrol. For a conservative who genuinely respected the law and family values, that would have been the most final of straws. So what did our Brent do when Trump came calling last year? Did he tell the president where he could stick his job offer along with his whole political agenda? No. He bent the knee and kissed the ring, confirming that he didn’t care a jot about the courts ruling in Carrol’s favour.
After that bit of moral self-lobotomy, it must have been easy not to care about the 2024 court ruling when Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records: if sexual abuse couldn’t nudge the Bozell needle, why would a conviction for a bit of light fraud change anything?
No, I’m afraid South Africans are making a mistake when they accuse Bozell of arrogantly dismissing our courts, because it’s not personal. He clearly doesn’t respect any court except one: the court of the king, that gilded hall in which you creep ever closer to his golden slippers, hoping he’ll toss you another grape from his plate.
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