Ambassador Brent Bozell III’s recent opinion piece in Daily Maverick titled, SA to pay the price of inaction as United States runs out of patience, is a candid statement.
We welcome candour, even when it arrives with a visa restriction policy attached. It is better to engage with an honest expression of the American administration’s position than to sustain a diplomatic fiction that serves neither country.
As the African National Congress, we believe that the relationship between South Africa and the United States is too important to be reduced to a checklist of demands. But since the ambassador has publicly presented five “Asks”, it would be disrespectful not to respond to him.
When many of us in South Africa watched Ambassador Bozell’s Senate confirmation hearing, we braced ourselves for the very rhetoric we are now witnessing. Yet, upon his arrival, he struck a surprisingly positive and cooperative tone. While some among us cautioned against being lulled into a false sense of hope, the ANC chose to embrace the ambassador in good faith. Alas, it appears our optimism was misplaced.
Former President Nelson Mandela once recounted Oliver Tambo’s reaction to the news that the National Party had won the 1948 elections. Rather than despair, OR Tambo welcomed the clarity of the outcome, noting, “Now we know exactly what we will be dealing with”. Today, we find ourselves echoing those sentiments.
In a recent engagement at the AfriForum’s community safety centre in Centurion, Ambassador Bozell went so far as to declare himself an Ambassador of AfriForum. This was unsurprising, although we did not expect him to say it out loud.
I will not dwell extensively on the historical baggage of the individuals historically associated with AfriForum, nor their ideological links to the Ossewabrandwag and its dark flirtations with Nazism during World War 2. I raise it only in line with OR Tambo’s sentiments, as amaXhosa would put it: Ingcuka ide yalukhulula ufele lwegusha (The wolf even sheds the sheepskin).
The Ambassador’s article outlines the US Administration’s “Five Asks” of South Africa. In diplomatic parlance, “asks” are requests, but in Bozell’s formulation and tone, they read as demands. The assertion is that to enjoy a “constructive relationship” with the current US Administration, South Africa is expected to unthinkingly acquiesce to these dictates.
Once again, as a sovereign democracy like the United States of America, we owe it to our citizens and our partners to respond with facts, rigour and a commitment to our Constitutional principles!
On the chant, Kill the Boer, and ‘rural crime’
The Ambassador asks that President Ramaphosa condemn the singing of this slogan. The ANC has addressed this matter, and indeed so has the President of the Republic.
Following the Concourt ruling against AfriForum, I stated clearly that: “No member of the ANC today will be allowed to sing Kill the Boer. Simple as that. Even if the Constitutional Court said you can sing, why should we sing Kill the Boer in a democratic dispensation?”
Ambassador Bozell must understand that South Africa is a society governed by the rule of law. We have robust legislation against hate speech and incitement to violence, overseen by Chapter 9 institutions like the South African Human Rights Commission and an independent judiciary. Organisations like AfriForum have consistently utilised these very legal avenues to raise their grievances.
Ambassador Bozell may disagree with a judicial outcome. He cannot reasonably ask a President of the Republic to treat an independent court’s judgment as though it were an instruction from the executive, which can simply be withdrawn.
I restate what I said last year: “As the ANC, we are not chanting ‘kill the boer, kill the farmer’ because we don’t believe it is relevant at the present moment, but we would not stop others from chanting. It is not illegal as it is now defined by the Constitutional Court. As the ANC, we wouldn’t chant that slogan – nor would we water it down to ‘kiss the boer’ – because when we chanted that slogan, it had a particular meaning”.
The safety of farmers is a duty of the South African state. So is the safety of farmworkers and everyone else living in rural communities. Bozell asks that rural crime be made a priority with a funded plan even as he concedes there is already a National Rural Safety Strategy. Conveniently, he omits to mention that the strategy covers farms, smallholdings and surrounding communities. Government has reported its implementation across rural police station areas. That does not mean the work is finished, far from it.
The discussion should focus on whether the strategy is effective, where it is failing and what resources and accountability will improve it. If the United States genuinely wishes to offer practical support, as Bozell states, we should examine that offer constructively.
While we are at it, we must also describe the victims accurately. In the 4th quarter of 2024/25, the SAPS recorded six murders in farming communities: two farmers, three employees and one farm dweller. Those categories do not, by themselves, establish the race of each victim, and a single quarter cannot settle every question about rural crime. They do establish why it would be wrong to speak as though only farm owners face danger. Every one of those deaths warrants our attention.
We know that because of the legacy of Apartheid – which systematically underdeveloped rural Bantustans into reservoirs of cheap labour – the majority of rural areas are inhabited by Black South Africans. Consequently, the overwhelming majority of victims of rural and farm crimes are Black.
To frame rural crime as a targeted racial issue is to allow oneself to be led down the garden path by AfriForum. It appears Bozell is content to act in lockstep with them, fulfilling what US Deputy Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Samuel Samson, just a few days ago at Washington’s National Press Club, disturbingly termed a partnership of “civilisational allies”.
On expropriation without compensation
In his recent media engagements, Ambassador Bozell consistently expresses a fear, drawn from history, of arbitrary seizure of private property. We understand that fear.
However, we must gently remind him that South Africa has no such history – except, of course, for the brutal land dispossessions carried out against the Black majority under colonialism and Apartheid.
It is important to address the question of property rights without caricature. Section 25 of our Constitution prohibits arbitrary deprivation of property. It explicitly states that “no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property”.
The Constitution permits expropriation under law for a public purpose or in the public interest, with compensation that is just and equitable in the circumstances. It also requires the state to foster equitable access to land. Thus we have a duty to honour both the protection of rights and the obligation to remedy dispossession.
Because they are determined to sustain the boogieman image of a Communist ANC, what AfriForum will not tell Bozell is that it was actually the ANC which proposed and championed this Section 25 of the Constitution during the negotiations at Codesa, precisely to protect property rights while mandating land reform.
The 2024 Expropriation Act does not authorise indiscriminate confiscation or arbitrary seizures of private property. In fact, it restricts nil compensation to four narrowly defined situations: “land speculation, abandoned land (or buildings), unused state land… and land where past state subsidies and investment equal or exceed the market value”. These are examples, not an automatic rule. The circumstances of each case still matter.
The Act also requires notice to affected owners and rights holders, an explanation of the proposed expropriation and compensation offer and an opportunity to object. Compensation disputes may be taken to court.
Rightly, Ambassador Bozell says the Act is under judicial review. Our respect for property rights includes respect for the courts charged with determining that challenge.
On BEE and equity equivalent programmes
Ambassador Bozell critiques our Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies, labelling them a “burdensome and inefficient race-based regulatory environment”. Yet, in the same breath, he admits that American companies operate here at a massive scale, creating jobs and building infrastructure. American companies have operated profitably in South Africa for decades, including under the very empowerment framework the Ambassador describes as “burdensome and inefficient”. They have made substantial returns.
One would expect an administration led by business-minded leaders to celebrate this mutual prosperity. Instead, the impatience seems targeted. Looking closely at the telecommunications and mining sectors that Ambassador Bozell highlights, the true objectives become clear, which is to secure unfettered access for ventures like Starlink and the extraction of Rare Earth Minerals.
We welcome foreign investment – including recent low-orbit satellite investments by Amazon – but such investments must respect the laws of the Republic and contribute to the empowerment and economic inclusion of the historically marginalised.
The ANC remains committed to broad-based black economic empowerment as a necessary instrument to redress centuries of deliberate exclusion. However, we have also always understood that the form such empowerment takes must be responsive to economic realities.
Equity equivalents already exist within South Africa’s empowerment framework, and many US companies are complying without any negative impact on their operations and bottom line. President Ramaphosa has explained their purpose, as allowing qualifying multinationals to contribute to skills, enterprise development and other transformation goals where their global structures prevent local equity sales.
The government has indicated that it intends to pursue legislative change to allow such programmes to complement ownership requirements. Those proposals must be judged by whether they expand connectivity and meaningful participation by South Africans who were excluded from ownership for generations. Mining likewise requires careful attention to the rights and opportunities of workers and host communities.
Finally, we are willing to discuss how our rules can work better and attract more investment, but sector rules cannot be waived by diplomatic agreement, nor can they be imposed from Washington.
The question is not whether foreign companies can operate in South Africa – they have and continue to do so successfully. The question is whether they are willing to do so as partners in our national project, rather than as extractors.
South Africa wants American investment. We want a partnership that builds resilient supply chains, deepens industrial cooperation and creates value from our resources. But we will not dismantle the instruments of redress that are essential to our social stability and our constitutional order to secure that investment.
Ambassador Bozell concludes that South Africa’s response shows it does not want a constructive relationship with the United States. That conclusion is mistaken. We want and value our relationship with the United States immensely. We also want a relationship in which disagreement does not become a test of loyalty and South African constitutional processes are given the respect we accord to those of the United States.
Our democratic task remains to build a united, non-racial and non-sexist society in which every South African belongs, united in our diversity. We will continue to pursue it with humility about our shortcomings and firmness about our right to independently determine our destiny. That is the basis on which we extend our hand to the United States: as a friend and as an equal. DM
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