US ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell.
THE United States has once again taken aim at South Africa’s independent foreign policy. In a post on the social network X, the US ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell, criticised Pretoria for hosting Iran’s deputy foreign minister while Deputy President Paul Mashatile was in Beijing deepening ties with China.
“Pretoria calls this non-alignment,” Bozell wrote. “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.”
The remarks amount to a thinly veiled rebuke of a sovereign government for declining to fall in line behind the Trump administration. They also carry an unmistakable message about Iran.
By singling out a routine diplomatic visit at a moment when Washington has been pressing its own confrontation with Tehran, the ambassador appeared to be signalling that South Africa should treat America’s adversaries as its own, a posture that many in the country read as an attempt to draw Pretoria toward a conflict that is not its own.
