SOUTH AFRICA IS NOT FOR SALE: LAMOLA MUST EXPEL BOZELL AND DEFEND OUR SOVEREIGNTY

US Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III is on thin ice, and Minister Ronald Lamola must act.

By Mpho Dube, Editor-in-Chief

The Azanian | Truth. Fearless. Unfiltered.  

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South Africa’s sovereignty is non-negotiable. For months we have watched a dangerous escalation, and today we must say it plainly: US Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III is on thin ice, and Minister Ronald Lamola must act.

The facts are no longer in dispute. Inside Luthuli House, Parliament and DIRCO, senior officials are openly calling for Bozell — a right-wing ideologue appointed by Donald Trump — to be declared persona non grata and expelled.

Why? Because patience has run out after demarche after demarche was ignored.

Bozell is not acting as a diplomat. He is acting as Trump’s eyes and ears, replicating Trump’s lies about South Africa to the world, undermining our independence, and treating Pretoria like a colony. As one senior ANC official told The Azanian: “We must demonstrate that we are a sovereign state. He needs to stop treating us like an American colony.”

This is the same playbook Washington used when it expelled our Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool in March 2025 for criticising Trump. If they can expel ours for words, we can expel theirs for actions that attack our constitutional order.

Now Washington has moved from insults to blackmail.

As The New York Times reported on 29 September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has imposed new visa restrictions on South Africans accused of being “responsible for or complicit in race-based discrimination, incitement of violence, and land expropriation without compensation”.

Rubio said the policy targets those involved in “laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or incitement of imminent violence”.

Let us call this what it is: a lie weaponised into visa policy.

The justification is the discredited myth of “white genocide.” There is no white genocide in South Africa. There is no apartheid against white people. That narrative is absolute nonsense — a racist fantasy lobbied by Afrikaner groups and now adopted as official US policy. South Africa froze aid, took us to the ICJ over Gaza, and Trump needed a pretext. He found it in farm murders and land reform.

What Rubio calls “race-based discrimination” is our Constitution. What he calls “uncompensated seizures” is Section 25 and the Expropriation Act, passed by a democratic parliament to correct the fact that 7% of the population still owns 72% of farmland. Transformation is not discrimination. Redress is not racism.

Bozell himself admitted this is just the beginning, calling the visa ban “a first response, calibrated and specific. But I won’t pretend it’s the last word”. The threat is clear: accept our lies or face tariffs, sanctions, and the collapse of the trade deal being negotiated by Parks Tau and John Steenhuisen.

South Africa will not be held ransom.

Lamola must defend the country. If Bozell continues to treat our sovereignty with contempt, he must go. Yes, Washington will retaliate. But as one analyst told us: governments come and go, the state remains.

We survived colonialism. We survived apartheid. We will survive Donald Trump.

Mr. President, respect South Africa — or leave us alone.

Mpho Dube is the Editor-in-Chief, Founder, and Publisher of The Azanian, a prominent online national and international publication. His exceptional work has been recognized with three national awards from The Caxton/The Citizen, a testament to his dedication to quality journalism.Additionally, he was endorsed to serve at the Pan African Parliament (PAP), highlighting his commitment to contributing to Africa's development and progress. As a respected political analyst, Mpho contributes to SABC and various media platforms, providing insightful commentary on national and international affairs.