By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Caption: Ambassador Mxolisi Nkosi is the Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations in Geneva and Other International Organisations in Switzerland.
Mxolisi Nkosi, who is the current Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, will assume a new role as South Africa’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York.
According to SABC US Correspondent Sherwin Bryce-Pease, Nkosi is scheduled to arrive in the United States to lead the New York mission at the beginning of next month.
Recently South Africa has abstained in a vote for a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution condemning Iran’s violent repression of protesters and calling for an investigation into the regime’s actions.
“It was ironic that states whose history was stained with genocide and war crimes now attempted to lecture Iran on social governance and human rights,” Nkosi said.
Seven votes against, including from China, India and Pakistan, as well as 14 abstentions, among others from Qatar and South Africa, failed to stop the resolution.
The resolution “strongly deplores the violent crackdown of peaceful protests resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, including children, and large numbers of injured individuals, as well as the arrest of thousands in connection with the nationwide protests that started on 28 December 2025”.
He has served in several senior positions in the Foreign Ministry of post-Apartheid South Africa.
Between February 2012 and March 2016 was the South African Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Head of Mission to the European Union.
Until his appointment as South Africa’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, he was the Head of Global Governance and Continental Agenda in the South African Foreign Ministry, and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Sherpa to G7 Outreach Sessions.
He has travelled extensively throughout the world and in Africa, and accompanied high-level delegations of former President Thabo Mbeki, President Jacob Zuma, former Foreign Ministers Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, and now President Cyril Ramaphosa and Minister Naledi Pandor.
Meanwhile Ramaphosa has appointed Roelf Meyer, a former chief government negotiator during talks to end apartheid in the 1990’s, to be next ambassador to the United States.
South Africa has not had an ambassador in Washington since Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled in March 2025 after angering the Trump administration.
Relations between Washington and Pretoria have been tense during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Trump has made false claims about the persecution of South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority, and created a refugee programme for them — which Pretoria regards as a preferential immigration scheme for whites.
The veteran politician began his career as a parliamentarian in 1979 under P.W. Botha, the defiant face of white rule at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle. He later served as minister of defence and then constitutional affairs under President F.W. de Klerk.