30 March, 2025

With US-South Africa relations already at a low ebb, on 26 March 2025 the Trump administration announced the appointment of a ridiculously unsuited individual as the new American ambassador to Pretoria. It was widely assumed in the press that this merely needed Senate confirmation, but it might not be as straightforward as that, and certainly should not be.

A little over a week following the expulsion in mid-March of Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Trump publicly announced the appointment of pro-Israel right-wing media critic, Leo Brent Bozell III, to be US ambassador to South Africa. Senate confirmation of Bozell’s appointment will probably be a formality but the interesting question is whether he has already been granted agrément by the South African government, i.e. privately said to be acceptable in Pretoria. In order to avoid the risk of public embarrassment, it’s long been customary for one state privately to seek agrément for the person it wants to send to another, and this was expressly provided in the codification of diplomatic law in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961. Article 4 is unambiguous on the point:

  1. The sending State must make certain that the agrément of the receiving State has been given for the person it proposes to accredit as head of the mission to that State.
  2. The receiving State is not obliged to give reasons to the sending State for a refusal of agrément.

So, were widely respected diplomatic law to have been followed by the Trump administration in this case, the fact that Bozell has been publicly announced would indicate that agrément had been given by the South African government. But this is Trump World, so I doubt it very much. It’s probably just another example of the contempt for international law and disposition to throw its weight around of the current administration in Washington. In which case, I sincerely hope that Pretoria – heavily tied in terms of trade and investment though it is to the USA – will quietly let it be known that Bozell III is just not acceptable.