South Africa Summons US Ambassador Bozell Over Remarks on 'Kill the Boer' Chant and Black Economic Empowerment

South Africa Summons US Ambassador Bozell Over Remarks on 'Kill the Boer' Chant and Black Economic Empowerment

PRETORIA, 11 March 2026. South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation summoned newly arrived United States Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III on Wednesday to account for remarks characterised as "undiplomatic," after Bozell declared that an apartheid-era political chant was "hate speech" regardless of South African court findings, and compared Black economic empowerment policies to apartheid-era racial discrimination.

At a meeting with South African business leaders earlier in the week, Ambassador Bozell said of the phrase "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer", an anti-apartheid struggle slogan occasionally sung at political gatherings, that he did not care what South African courts had determined. "I'm sorry, I don't care what your courts say. It's hate speech," Bozell reportedly told the audience. South African courts have consistently ruled that the chant must be understood in its historical context and that it does not constitute incitement to violence.

Bozell also criticised South Africa's Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment framework, constitutionally grounded legislation designed to address the structural economic inequalities created by apartheid, drawing a comparison between the policy and apartheid-era discrimination against Black citizens.

Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola, who chaired the summons meeting, rejected Bozell's characterisations. "Broad-based Black economic empowerment is not reverse racism," Lamola said, describing the policy as a constitutional requirement responding to historical injustice. Lamola also warned that Bozell "must not take us back to a polarised society along racial lines."

The episode added a new layer of friction to an already strained bilateral relationship. The Trump administration had applied blanket 30% tariffs on South African goods, suspended US aid and development assistance, offered refugee status to white Afrikaners claiming persecution, and was considering legislation, the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act, that could further curtail trade cooperation. South Africa's ICJ case against Israel and its ties to Iran, Russia, and China had each independently drawn criticism from Washington.

Bozell had only recently taken up his post and had not yet formally presented his credentials to President Cyril Ramaphosa, a diplomatic formality that South Africa said would need to be completed before normal high-level contact with the US mission could resume.

South Africa and the United States have maintained full diplomatic relations since the end of apartheid. The current period represents one of the most significant ruptures in bilateral relations since 1994.