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US Chargé d’Affaires to South Africa, Dana Brown, at the opening of the G20 First Foreign Ministers Meeting at Nasrec Expo Centre on 20 February 2025 in Johannesburg. Picture: Gallo Images/Alet Pretorius
The United States’ chargé d’affaires in South Africa, Dana Brown, has resigned from the US State Department with immediate effect.
A chargé d’affaires is second in command to an ambassador.
According to the US embassy in South Africa, Brown assumed the role of Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Mission to South Africa in August 2024.
A US Embassy official confirmed Brown’s resignation to The Citizen on Friday.
“Chargé d’Affaires to US Mission South Africa Dana Brown is retiring from the US Foreign Service in March and returning to the United States to spend more time with her family after a notable career in international diplomacy,” the US Embassy said.
“For 27 years Chargé d’Affaires Brown has served with dedication to strengthen US relationships and partnerships around the world. The US Mission to South Africa has thrived under her leadership.
“The US Department of State has selected Mr. David Greene, the current Deputy Chief of Mission in Abuja, Nigeria, to serve as Chargé d’Affaires at the US Mission to South Africa, ensuring continuity in leadership and the advancement of US priorities,” it said.
Greene is expected to arrive in South Africa on 14 March.
His appointment comes a week after Brown represented the US at the first foreign ministers meeting held under South Africa’s G20 presidency.
Brown’s most recent assignments include leading the Office Southern European Affairs, covering Türkiye, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta, and serving as Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, where she advocated for closer Swiss security integration with NATO members and cooperation on emerging technologies.”
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Her resignation follows that of the former ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety.
US President Donald Trump’s new administration is yet to appoint an ambassador to replace Brigety.
Brigety, a member of the Democratic Party under former US President Joe Biden, made the announcement in November last year.
ALSO READ: Controversial US Ambassador to SA Reuben Brigety announces resignation
The ties between South Africa and the US have been in the spotlight after Trump halted funding to South Africa. He signed an executive order against the country which alleges human rights issues regarding the government’s land policy.
“South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
The relationship between the two countries began to show cracks in 2022 when Brigety claimed that South Africa supplied Russia with arms, which he said were loaded on the Russian vessel.
The docking of the cargo ship became the subject of controversy in recent months, with allegations surfacing that South Africa was supplying weapons to Russia amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
While an investigation into the matter found that there was no evidence to substantiate the claim that Lady R transported weapons from South Africa to Russia, the release of the “executive summary” of the findings of an investigative panel appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa raised more questions than answers.
“Due to the classified nature of the evidence that informed the report, the government will not publicly engage further on the substance of the report,” it said.
The watered-down summary of the report said the panel established that the goods delivered by the Lady R in Simon’s Town were equipment for the SANDF, which it had requested, and had been ordered by Armscor from a company based in the United Arab Emirates.
ALSO READ: ‘The lies will be incomplete without you’: Ramaphosa’s spokesperson takes shots at US embassy
Meanwhile, in the latest development, Afrikaner lobby groups Solidarity and AfriForum handed over the “Washington Memorandum”, asking the United States to provide humanitarian assistance for Afrikaner development.
The organisations under the Solidarity Movement met with senior representatives of the Donald Trump administration at the White House on Tuesday.
While Trump has halted funding to South Africa, the Solidarity Movement wants the US to provide aid to a development fund to assist with community infrastructure protecting Afrikaners.
On Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa slammed AfriForum and Solidarity’s visit to Washington.
“What they are doing has spawned divisions in our nation, and that is not a nation-building process — running around the world trying to have your problems solved.
“You are just sowing divisions because now a number of South Africans then start looking at others negatively, and I don’t think that is the right way to handle our problems,“ Ramaphosa told journalists at an education lekgotla in Boksburg, Gauteng on Thursday.
Responding to Ramaphosa’s remarks, AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said their visit at the White House stemmed from frustrations with the South African government’s refusal to address their concerns.
“It is ironic that President Ramaphosa is now falsely accusing AfriForum of spreading divisions in the country, while in fact it is President Ramaphosa and ANC leaders that are dividing the country.
“It is Ramaphosa who signed the anti-Afrikaans Bela Act – an act that threatens the cultural existence of Afrikaans-speaking cultural communities. It is also Ramaphosa who signed the Expropriation Act. It is he who refuses to condemn slogans such as ‘Kill the Boer’ and it is the same president who denies the existence of farm murders,” he said.
Kriel said that Afrikaans lobby groups sent letters to Ramaphosa regarding the Bela Act, the Expropriation Act and the current tension with the US, but Ramaphosa “ignored” them.
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