Tony Leon: New US Ambassador to SA “a flamethrower from Trump’s MAGA world”
The White House dropped a surprise last night in naming US conservative heavyweight Leo Brent Bozell, rather than frontrunner Joel Pollak, as its choice to become the ambassador to South Africa. Bozell is an anti-mainstream media activist, best known for founding (in 1987) and running the Media Research Centre, whose stated mission is to "expose and neutralise… the (US) national news media." Bozell is also a vocal strong supporter of Israel. Here's an inside track from Tony Leon, former leader of the DA and SA's erstwhile ambassador to Argentina. He spoke to BizNews editor Alec Hogg.
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Edited transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Alec Hogg (00:08.022)
Big news overnight in South Africa is the appointment of a new US ambassador to the country—or at least the proposed new US ambassador. Not the man we thought. We've been talking to Joel Pollak from Breitbart for quite a while. He was tagged as the front runner. He had a lot of involvement in South Africa, lived here for a period of time, but he's not the guy. And somebody who knows all about ambassadors, all about the US, and certainly, hopefully, all about the new guy who will be coming is Tony Leon, the former leader of the opposition in Parliament in this country. Tony, you've been tipped to be South Africa's new ambassador to the United States by Helen Zille. She really wants you to do that job. Are you open to it?
Tony Leon (00:53.996)
Well, you know, it's very generous of Helen to have suggested my name, and I appreciate her vote of confidence, but she, of course, is not the decider—President Ramaphosa is. I suspect he'll choose one of his own to be an ambassador. If I were approached—and this is entirely hypothetical and speculative—I wouldn't say yes or no. I'd interrogate, as they say, Alec, in the law of retail, the terms and conditions. Because, as I've said before, and perhaps I can elaborate now, the personality, even the person of the ambassador, is significant, but it's not the most significant thing. The more important thing is: what is the policy, what is the alignment, and can the diplomat have any effect on those two matters? Because if not, you're really on a hiding to nothing. It's not going to change, absent a change in South Africa's approach, policy, and volume. It ratchets up or down on some key issues. That would require a serious conversation. But, as I say, I don't think I'm going to get a call. I don't say yes or no because it's hypothetical.
Alec Hogg (02:14.71)
Yeah, I suppose it's like anybody being made an offer for any business job. You don't just jump in because it's CEO of SABMiller. You find out first what's required of you. The point here is that you have been an ambassador before, to a country that was going through terribly difficult times and is now suddenly booming—Argentina. Maybe if they offered you that job again, it could be quite exciting.
Tony Leon (02:40.824)
Yeah, well, look, I love Argentina—the place and the people. I did not love the previous government of Argentina, the Kirchner Peronist administration, when I was there. Although, I have to say, despite being quite voluble, as you know, in spoken and written word, I never uttered a single word of public criticism of the Kirchner administration while I was there. It would have been not only undiplomatic but entirely counterproductive. I had to deal with a heap of issues, Alec, against what at the time was the most protectionist administration in the world. South Africa had very big interests there. Standard Bank had the seventh-largest retail bank there. AngloGold Ashanti had a huge mine down south, and we had big agri-bilateral products going in both directions. Getting those through was like literally going through the eye of a needle because Argentina was so import-averse, yet we managed to push up the terms of trade by 120 percent while I was there. I recorded that as an accomplishment, and that actually is the metric against which any ambassador should be measured: Have you improved the terms of trade? Is there an appropriate public diplomacy footprint that you've actually put your country's position in the light? And thirdly, have you strengthened the bilateral relationship? Without being modest, those three metrics were achieved while I was in office in Buenos Aires—not in the easiest of circumstances, but it was a challenging period.
Alec Hogg (04:20.504)
It's interesting that you've already outlined that for us because we're going to talk about the new ambassador in just a moment. But Joel Pollak—we've spoken about him. You know him well. He seemed to be right in pole position. He also seemed to be an excellent choice for the United States—at least somebody who knows a lot about South Africa, having lived here. I think you told me that he was married to Rhoda Kadalie's daughter, so he knows the story.
Tony Leon (04:47.917)
Yeah.
Alec Hogg (04:49.868)
And yet he didn't make it. Perhaps because he himself is a little undiplomatic—or so lately?
Tony Leon (04:58.542)
Well, look, I have no idea how the State Department or the White House makes these appointments or selections. Joel has a deep knowledge of and actual empathy for South Africa, although he lost. People think there's some sort of whisper that I whisper in his ear or vice versa—complete nonsense. Joel worked for me last 19 years ago, but I have high regard for his work ethic and his professionalism. I don't know what it was. What interested me is that a lot of people were saying on X or Twitter, you know, his campaign to be appointed ambassador has failed. Well, be careful what you wish for, because whatever the pluses and minuses of Joel would have been as an ambassador, the actual person selected seems like a flamethrower from the MAGA Trump world. People who are rejoicing in Joel's non-selection should be a little cautious about what might be coming our way soon—or who might be.
Alec Hogg (05:56.034)
Tell us about Mr Bozell, the man who has been selected.
Tony Leon (06:01.154)
Alec, I know absolutely nothing about him, and to be honest, until last night when I read up about him, I didn't know of his existence. But what I have read, which seems to be incontestable, is that he is an extreme conservative. He has set up an NGO which takes on distortions in the so-called mainstream media. He apparently thought—I thought when I lived in America in 2007 that public broadcast radio was fairly mild—he wanted it closed down for being biased. His son was arrested and sent to jail for his involvement in the January 6th storming of the Capitol, and he himself denied the outcome of the 2020 election. But what his views are on South Africa, or indeed the wider world, I have no idea. I guess we'll get an intimation because every ambassadorial nominee has to go through a Senate selection process. That's when there'll be back-and-forth questions and answers, and you might get some insight into how Mr Bozell views South Africa.
Alec Hogg (07:15.328)
Yeah, and it's not just "gone to jail" from what I read. His son is still in jail and was sentenced to four years. Maybe—yeah, he should have been—got it.
Tony Leon (07:20.844)
Well, weren't they all released by Trump? I don't know. But, you know, the thing is, of course, South Africa has a role in the ambassadorial process because, as you know, there's a process called agrément, which means that the receiving country has to accept the credentials of the proposed ambassador. So, I guess that is going to be a test, if you like, for South Africa. Now we know Mr Bozell's profile because it's available on the internet. How is South Africa going to respond to this nomination? Is it going to green-light it? Is it going to reject it? Is it going to play tit-for-tat after the Rasool expulsion? Who knows?
Alec Hogg (08:07.672)
It is an extraordinary selection. This Media Research Center—and if you've spent any time on it—has been going since 1987. He started it himself. It has a directive, or its purpose is to attack pretty much what they call "liberal media." Now, "liberal" in our country seems to have a different connotation to "liberal" in the United States.
Tony Leon (08:31.97)
Yes, yeah, look, to speak frankly, I'm a liberal—well, I'm a South African liberal, probably. I don't know where that places me in the American context. And I guess, Alec, without pigeonholing you, you'd probably also be a liberal yourself in the South African context. I'm always a bit wary about people who take on—who try to curb free speech from whichever perspective. I just have a liberal response to that because I think one of the great gifts of America to the world is the First Amendment, the right to free speech. I think it should have a multiplicity of outlets. I don't think you can try to—once you start attacking one of them… Many years ago, I lectured constitutional and public law at Wits University at the height of apartheid when there were big curbs on free speech here through censorship and draconian government regulation. We used the United States' free speech cases as exemplars of what a good democratic country should follow. When there starts being a pushback against that within the foremost democracy upholding free speech in the world, I'm a bit wary. But look, I haven't read what this crowd does, but I take your point that it tries to curb media, which is not a good thing in my view.
Alec Hogg (09:59.928)
It's got 925,000 hours of TV news in its archive—925,000 hours. You've got to be serious about it. They've got 4,000 cases of alleged censorship. So it really does start becoming a little concerning, I suppose, from the outside, when you say, hang on, if the United States is the leader of the free world and the greatest proponent of free speech, are these guys promoting free speech, or are they trying to terminate it—or, yeah, address it?
Tony Leon (10:36.544)
Yeah, well, who knows? We'll no doubt have Mr Bozell's view on media and other matters coming to a cinema near us soon, right here, if he gets appointed.
Alec Hogg (10:48.44)
I also saw a tweet from Donald Trump in 2018 when he quoted these guys, and it just gives me, I think, better insight. He says that their research—the Research Center—maintains that 92%—92%—of everything that was said about Donald Trump on ABC and CBS was false, or biased in one way or another.
Tony Leon (11:17.954)
Well, it didn't… Yes, it certainly didn't stop Mr Trump's election. You know, I think there's…
Alec Hogg (11:18.338)
He's certainly coming from a point of view.
Tony Leon (11:27.608)
…a cottage industry around saying the media is biased and therefore don't believe anything they say, on the one hand, and on the other hand using that alleged bias—or the reality of bias—to propel yourself forward, which is exactly what Trump has done. Therefore, being able to dismiss criticism—whether it's valid, whether it's objective, whether it's false or true—as being of no account because it comes from a biased source.
Alec Hogg (11:53.368)
I'd like to explore that with you as kind of the second focus area of our conversation today. For many years at the World Economic Forum, I've been attending the release of the Edelman Trust Index. It's been interesting to see how that develops. It's on a Tuesday morning, generally, and Richard Edelman is there, and there are 33,000 people polled around the world, including more than 1,000 here in South Africa.
And the view there—given that we've got this guy whose business is to focus on media credibility—the view from all of those 33,000 respondents around the world is that media is the least trusted of the most important areas. Business has a 62 percent score, NGOs 58, government 52, and media is exactly there at 52. That's overall. In South Africa, it's down to 46 percent that actually trust what's in the media. So this is very fertile ground for Mr Bozell, one would think.
Tony Leon (12:52.782)
Well, look, I think he might have some other priorities if he's going to be the American ambassador here than exploring the media biases here or elsewhere, because, as you know, there are some real big issues in the bilateral relationship, which I suspect media bias or objectivity is probably fairly low down on the list.
Alec Hogg (13:16.258)
But what about Israel? Yes, if you have a look at his public profile, he's got the Star of David up there. The last ambassador—well, they were quite happy that the proposed front runner, Joel Pollak, was very strongly pro-Israel. It appears Mr Bozell's even more so. Might that count against South Africa accepting him?
Tony Leon (13:41.144)
Well, look, I don't know, but whoever Trump is going to send to South Africa and to other significant outposts of American diplomacy is liable to be very pro-Israel. That is very high up on the Trump administration's list of issues. South Africa, vis-à-vis the United States and Israel, is on the wrong side of that issue. So actually, whether it's Bozell or Pollak or some other person, America's representative in South Africa and the world is going to have a very explicitly pro-Israel inclination. That's a fact. The personality is less important than that policy because that is the policy of the Trump administration. And South Africa, as you know, has a completely contrary policy. That is one of the issues that is at the heart of the conflict between America and South Africa right now.
Alec Hogg (14:37.474)
So who actually makes the decision? Is it the foreign affairs—our foreign affairs department—which is very strongly staffed by Muslims themselves and those who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, or is it the president who would make this call?
Tony Leon (14:57.964)
Well, you know, I don't know what the interplay is. When I was appointed ambassador, it was because Jacob Zuma decided I should be an ambassador, and he sent the instruction, and DIRCO obliged. That's how it worked. That's the only case I know of. But I have to say it's probably a combination. I'm not sure that President Ramaphosa is fully in control of the Department of International Relations because he seems to have a… We saw this last week, Alec. On the one hand, his spokesman said, "Look, you must tamp down your utterances when you come back to South Africa." That was the message sent to Rasool and the reception committee at Cape Town Airport. Now, the presidency should—but doesn't—control what the ANC crowd does, and they were very exultant at Rasool's return. But Ibrahim Rasool is an employee of DIRCO. He's not some random person who came back and grabbed a megaphone. He's a paid employee, even though he's a defrocked ambassador.
He came back, grabbed a megaphone, and made a few more comments justifying the reason why he got expelled from America. To me, this seemed completely contrary to the instruction given by President Ramaphosa if you looked at what his spokesman had said a few days before. But Rasool went ahead and did it anyway. I have to say that even the remarks he made in the seminar which got him expelled from America—either they were Ibrahim Rasool's personal opinion, in which case he shouldn't have uttered them because he wasn't speaking as Ibrahim Rasool, he was speaking as South Africa's ambassador to the United States—or indeed they were the instructions he received from the Department of International Relations. I don't know what the answer is because there's been no apology from South Africa for the remarks depicting the host country as a supreme…
Tony Leon (17:07.984)
So, you go figure, Alec, who's actually in charge. I saw President Ramaphosa say yesterday it's his personal prerogative—or presidential prerogative—to appoint ambassadors, and he's not even going to consult his coalition partners. Well, I don't know how the coalition partners are going to respond to that, but it does seem to me that if you've got a coalition government, it shouldn't just be the 40% party that gets to choose ambassadors—if indeed the ambassadors are being chosen from the political list and not from the professional list.
Alec Hogg (17:46.168)
Moving on to that as the final point I wanted to explore with you, this government of national unity seems to be creaking at the moment. The budget—the DA is standing firm. Frans Cronje says it cannot afford not to stand firm and not to take the position that it has. Then the ANC has very publicly gone out and asked—or tried to bring in—other parties, which, including Action SA yesterday, have rejected them. So it looks like they'll have to do something there. How are you reading this?
Tony Leon (18:18.318)
Well, look, I think the budget—leaving aside the merits and demerits of the budget and the tax hikes and so forth—is an interesting test for the GNU. You know, the DA, for example, gets a lot of flak: "Why don't you do this? Why haven't you stopped that?" Well, there's an arithmetical issue because the DA only has 22% of the votes. Those votes, or that percentage, are of less relevance when it comes to decisions made inside the cabinet. I mean, the DA should have much more heft—should have much more of a veto in the government of national unity than it does—if the ANC honoured the statement of intent, which was signed between the parties, which is observed primarily in the breach. But where the DA and other parties have real power is not in the cabinet, but in Parliament.
That's why the budget is so fraught, Alec—at the risk of boring you—because it doesn't depend on the president, which they keep parroting on about in the ANC. It entirely depends on a vote in Parliament—a straight up-and-down vote on the budget, yay or nay. That's where the ANC's lack of electoral support—it's only a 40% party—actually comes into play. So when people say the DA should do this or the DA should do that, well, the electorate only gave it 22%, so it's got 22%. That 22% becomes hugely significant—not in the cabinet, but in Parliament.
The budget is a creature of Parliament. It's not a consequence of decisions made in the cabinet. It starts in the cabinet, but the final say is in Parliament. So the more things are referred to Parliament—whether it's the budget or a new law—that's where the DA and other minority parties have real power, in and outside the GNU. So, yes, I think this is a test, and yes, I don't think the DA can climb down and say, "We gladly accept the tax hikes in exchange for nothing." Maybe you accept a VAT rise, but you get a list of concessions in exchange for that.
Alec Hogg (20:24.162)
So this is the beginning, as Helen Zille said, of coalition politics. If there isn't a change, she was also telling us at the business conference that the DA will vote line by line when it goes through Parliament, which also gives it a very different complexion to what happened in the past.
Tony Leon (20:42.89)
Exactly, and I think you've seen that playing out, as we say, in real time. Well, let's see how this ends. There are still weeks—actually, I think months, Alec—until the final budget, the Division of Revenue Bill, is enacted by Parliament or not enacted. You know, I suspect there'll be some negotiating, maybe some concessions. I don't think we've seen the end of the movie—I think we're in the middle of it right now.
Alec Hogg (21:08.536)
If you'd stayed in Parliament, you would have been in the cabinet. You would have been involved in all that's going on now. Isn't the fact that the ANC is looking for alternative partners to kick out the DA going to make the conversations in the cabinet room a lot more tricky in future?
Tony Leon (21:29.23)
I think it might. But, you know, just to reprise a conversation I had with one of the key DA people, the ANC is very choice-averse. It doesn't like to make hard choices, and politics and life are about those hard choices. So it actually has a legitimate choice to make. Does it want to align itself—as it's doing very uneasily, and for many of them unhappily—with a centrist party like the DA? Or does it want to align itself with a radical, extremist party like the EFF or the MK? That is a legitimate choice. Now, they made the choice last June by aligning with the DA, but they've almost spent the last seven or eight months trying to undermine the choice they've made—or trying to say, "Yes, but," or "No, not really." That's because of the internal dynamics in the ANC, which are all over the place.
I think at some point, sooner or later, it's going to have to reconcile itself with the choice it made last year by aligning with the DA—or indeed make another choice with hugely deleterious consequences for the country, the economy, and, you know, a lot of folk who are battling at the moment will just find their lives getting even worse if the ANC decides to go in another direction. However inadequate the situation might be right now, there's every chance that if the ANC makes another choice and aligns against the DA with the EFF or MK, it's going to get a hell of a lot worse.
Alec Hogg (23:12.406)
Maybe to close off with—at our conference as well, Paul Mashatile said that the ANC has learned a heck of a lot in the last few weeks. What do we have to look out for to see practically whether those learnings have been implemented—or are being implemented—in governance in South Africa?
Tony Leon (23:32.014)
Well, Alec, the big test, of course, is the budget. I mean, are they going to actually yield to the arithmetic of the situation—that they're a 40% party who needs the buy-in of other parties to pass a budget based broadly on consensus, concessions, and compromises? Or are they going to behave as they have hitherto, as though they're a 70% party, even though they aren't in reality? So I think that's the immediate test, and as I say, that's the critical one because everything hangs on the budget and what comes out of this process. But I think the ANC is going to learn that it can't just railroad other parties into doing what they don't want to do—and what it wishes to do—regardless of the compromises embedded in the situation.
You know, coalitions are all about compromises, and the ANC—well, I hope Mr Mashatile is correct. I hope they act on the heck of a lot they've learned in the last few weeks. I think they're in a stage of denial, you know. At one stage, when we were negotiating this government of national unity, the mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis, was on an investor call, and one of these investment companies said to him, "You know, just give the ANC the mental space to actually acclimatise to the fact that they didn't get 50%." You know, "Just pretend and allow them to do that." Well, I thought that was quite funny.
Tony Leon (25:12.888)
But actually, that suggestion proved to be correct. The ANC still doesn't seem to have acclimatised—despite them saying that they have—that they are no longer rulers and masters of this country, that they have to make concessions, they need to compromise, and they need the buy-in of their partners. Alec, I'm a detribalised attorney. The basis of any partnership in law or in politics is the utmost good faith. I think there have been some spectacular instances on the ANC's part of bad faith. So hopefully, with the learning curve that Deputy President Mashatile told your conference they're on, they can learn that with good faith, everything is possible; with bad faith, nothing is.
Alec Hogg (26:03.5)
That's quite interesting, the points you make there as well. Perhaps they are still going through those stages of grief that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross outlined for us—rejection, denial, acceptance, and finally commitment. Quite a way to go to get to acceptance and commitment yet. But it is, for those of us on the outside, very interesting to watch. Could the ambassadorship to the US be another one of these points that…
Tony Leon (26:17.711)
Yes. Yeah.
Alec Hogg (26:30.754)
…could go down to the wire, that the coalition partners might stand firm on?
Tony Leon (26:37.1)
Well, they can stand firm. I mean, that's something that is not normally subject to the cabinet making this selection, but I would think if the President is serious about keeping his coalition on the road, he will discuss not just the ambassador to America, but other posts, with his coalition partners—and also, without turning it into a sort of bargain, there needs to be some division of these positions so that actually South Africa is represented by the parties in the government. It's interesting—when Jacob Zuma offered me an ambassadorship back in 2004, before state capture, I need to say—he said something to me that was very interesting. He said the face of South Africa in the world should not just be the face of the ANC, and I was arguably one of the most recognisable non-ANC faces.
I thought that was interesting because at the time the ANC had more than 60% of the votes. Now that the ANC has only got 40% of the votes—or the public support—I thought, well, the face of South Africa in the world shouldn't just be the ANC. At the moment, it's 100% ANC. So the arithmetic in diplomacy, in Parliament, and in the cabinet should reflect the reality given to us by the electorate.
Alec Hogg (27:57.388)
Tony Leon, the chairman of Resolve Communications, and he was involved in putting the coalition together at the behest of the DA. I'm Alec Hogg from BizNews.com.
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