Roelf Meyer\u2019s appointment followed the expulsion of Ebrahim Rasool by Washington last year for criticizing the Trump administration<\/p>\n
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed veteran politician Roelf Meyer as the country\u2019s next ambassador to the US, more than a year after Washington expelled former envoy Ebrahim Rasool.
\nRamaphosa\u2019s spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, confirmed the appointment to Reuters on Tuesday. Meyer, 78, is best known as the National Party\u2019s chief negotiator in the talks that helped end South Africa\u2019s apartheid system in 1994.
\nMeyer, who is Afrikaner, entered parliament in 1979 during the apartheid era and later held senior cabinet posts under the white minority government. He served in the administrations of Pieter Botha and Frederik de Klerk, including as defense minister and later as minister of constitutional affairs, before emerging as one of the central figures in the transition to majority rule.
\nSouth Africa\u2019s presidency has described Meyer as a key figure in the creation of the country\u2019s constitutional democracy and \u201ca true citizen committed to a non-racial South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n
READ MORE: US expels South African ambassador<\/p>\n
Africa\u2019s most industrialized nation has not had an ambassador to the US since Rasool was declared persona non grata after he criticized the Trump administration\u2019s MAGA movement during a webinar in March 2025.<\/p>\n
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He said US President Donald Trump was launching an assault on those in power both \u201cat home and\u2026 abroad.\u201d Secretary of State Marco Rubio later announced his expulsion, saying Rasool was \u201cno longer welcome\u201d and calling him a \u201crace-baiting politician.\u201d
\nThe diplomatic rift came amid a broader deterioration in relations between Pretoria and Washington. Trump has frozen financial aid and imposed a 30% tariff on South African imports amid a dispute over Pretoria\u2019s foreign policy and domestic laws, including its land expropriation legislation, which he says discriminates against white South Africans.
\nSouth Africa has also faced US pressure to withdraw its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice over the war in Gaza. Pretoria has rejected the demands.<\/p>\n
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\u2018Hate speech\u2019 and \u2018genocide\u2019 claims: Why has South Africa summoned the US envoy?<\/p>\n
The new US ambassador, Leo Brent Bozell III, who arrived in South Africa in February, has also questioned the country\u2019s policies, and outlined five issues he said will need to be resolved for relations between Pretoria and Washington to improve.
\nLast month, Bozell was summoned by Pretoria over \u201cundiplomatic remarks,\u201d following his criticism of a South African court ruling that found the anti-apartheid chant \u2018Kill the Boer\u2019 was not hate speech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roelf Meyer\u2019s appointment followed the expulsion of Ebrahim Rasool by Washington last year for criticizing the Trump administration South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed veteran politician Roelf Meyer as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t