U.S. Ambassador L. Brent Bozell III faulted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa for refusing to condemn a kill chant and warned Pretoria is drifting toward America’s foes.
In an exclusive interview from Johannesburg, the Trump envoy said South Africa’s president will not denounce open incitement to murder, and that Pretoria’s foreign ministry just hauled him in for a third official rebuke over “undiplomatic conduct.”
Fox News Digital reported that Bozell, summoned this past week, drew a hard line on the chant “Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!,” race-based ownership rules that block U.S. investment, and South Africa’s steady tilt toward Iran, Russia, China, Cuba, and Hamas.
Three of five specific asks from the Trump administration have been ignored. Bozell called that “three strikes and you’re out.”
Bozell put the core failure in plain terms.
The U.S. ambassador stated:
"You've got a president of South Africa who refuses to condemn an incitement to kill."
He pressed the point further on what crowds actually do when the slogan rings out.
Bozell said:
"How hard is it to say this chant, where some, where people do it, 50,000 people in the stadium jump up and down, pantomiming guns, shooting people, how hard is it to say, stop it? This is awful that anybody would be inciting people to kill."
Ramaphosa has claimed he cannot stop the chant because South Africa’s supreme court cleared it. Bozell rejected that dodge.
The ambassador said:
"Ask 100% of the world if 'kill the farmer, kill the Boer' isn’t hate speech."
And he added:
"If that isn't hate speech, I don't know what hate speech is: inciting people to commit murder. So the answer we've gotten is, well, the court said it isn't. To which our response is look, in the United States, the president can disagree with the court and does about every five minutes because that's what you do in a democracy when you disagree with something."
Bozell’s bottom line was simple. If Ramaphosa wants to stop it, he can. Calling the court excuse “poppycock,” he said the choice belongs to the president. A Boer, as the article noted via Merriam-Webster, is a South African of Dutch or Huguenot descent, in short, a White farmer in the crosshairs of the slogan.
South Africa’s foreign ministry did not answer the substance. It summoned the ambassador instead.
A senior official at the Department of International Relations confirmed to Fox News Digital on Friday that this was Bozell’s third demarche since he arrived nine months ago. The official framed it as a lecture on manners, not a response on farmers, land, or terror ties.
The official said:
"This is a record. He was called in to explain his undiplomatic conduct. The issues related to the bilateral relations between the two countries are a subject of ongoing discussions. There is commitment from both sides to resolve the outstanding matters. South Africa values the relationship with the USA. It is a mutually beneficial partnership."
Washington’s reply was colder and clearer. A State Department spokesperson said the United States is done with stalling.
The spokesperson stated:
"We are not interested in diplomatic maneuvering, procedural delays or dialogue for dialogue’s sake. The ball is now squarely in the Government of South Africa’s court to outline the relationship it wants with the United States and respond accordingly to President Trump’s executive order."
That executive order sits alongside new visa restrictions tied to alleged racial discrimination and land seizures, pressure Pretoria has yet to meet with concrete action.
Bozell listed the policy wall in direct terms. The government, he said, will do no more for the Afrikaner rural community and forces mining through race-based programs. Foreign firms in mining and telecom must hand over 30% ownership to Black local entrepreneurs. American capital is ready. The rules are not.
He told Fox News Digital:
"You've got a government that has said it's not going to do any more for the Afrikaner rural community, and it's got a government that's saying no, your mining has to go through race-based programs. We're not going to allow your investments to go the way everyone else has been allowed to go."
And on the money left on the table:
"There are literally billions of dollars from American firms and American government investments ready to go into mining, but it's not going to go there so long as you have these race-based avenues they must go through. In telecom, Elon Musk has said he will put Starlink in 500 schools and pay for it in perpetuity if he's allowed to go this way. And they said, 'No, we want 30% of your company.' So yeah, of course it's hurting."
Bozell contrasted the U.S. offer with China’s extract-and-leave model. America, he said, would mine in South Africa, leave the value there, bring technology Pretoria could not get alone, and create hundreds of thousands of jobs when the country needs them. That partnership dies under race quotas and political hostility.
He put it this way:
"We're not going to do what the Chinese do. They come in, they take the ore, they take it to China, they benefit [from] it and they make a pile of money. We're saying to South Africa, we'll come in, we'll do the mining, we'll do it right there in South Africa."
Then:
"South Africa gets the money, not the Chinese. We bring in the technology that they could never have. We've created hundreds of thousands of jobs. We're saying we could create more and more and more at a time when they desperately need it, but it will be good for us as well. This is the partnership we want."
Beyond the chant and the ownership rules, Bozell said President Trump’s deepest worry is strategic. South Africa is leaving classic non-alignment and moving toward U.S. adversaries. The ruling African National Congress has hosted Hamas. Ties with Iran, Russia, China, and Cuba keep expanding. Ramaphosa met Vladimir Putin at the BRICS summit in Kazan in October 2024.
Bozell described Trump’s thinking:
"perhaps most of all, he's concerned about how South Africa has been systematically leaving the non-alignment space and moving closer and closer to our adversaries."
He went further on the ideology still driving parts of the state:
"There are people who are living in the glory days of the Soviet Union, and they want to go back to the good old days of communism. Why are they still working with Cuba?"
And on the terror and great-power roster:
"Why are they working with Iran and Hamas terror organizations? What's Russia doing for them? What's China doing for them? This is bad news when they're going in that direction. What we're saying is simply do what you've always done. Have a non-aligned with both sides. We'll live with that."
A testy Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa about 16 months ago already laid bare the gap. Bozell has met Trump in Washington recently to push the same file. The asks remain unmet. The demarches keep coming. The chant still has official cover.
Bozell said he wants the heat to drop, but only if South Africa chooses a real partnership over slogans, quotas, and adversary courts.
He closed the interview on that note:
"Look, temperatures can go up, but I want their temperature to go down too. You know, we want this partnership. We want to figure this out. It's good for South Africa. It's good for the United States of America. Temperatures need to go down, and we got to figure it out."
Refusing to condemn a stadium full of people miming the murder of farmers is not diplomacy. It is a choice. So is freezing out U.S. capital with race mandates while hosting Hamas and courting Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Havana. Pretoria can keep lecturing ambassadors about tone, or it can answer Trump’s executive order with something more serious than another summons. America has made the offer. South Africa has to decide whether it still wants the relationship it claims to value.
