The mainstream media in both the USA and South Africa are angry because President Donald Trump has appointed an ex-South African woman, Lana Marks, as the American ambassador in Pretoria. In contrast to previous American ambassadors, Marks is white and an entrepreneur who has managed a successful luxury-goods company.
Associated Press and Reuters labelled her as a “handbag designer” and suggested that she had been appointed because she was a member of the Mar-a-Lago holiday and golf resort developed by Donald Trump in Florida. According to Associated Press, up to 30 percent of US ambassadors are usually not appointed from the ranks of professional diplomats, which hardly makes an exception of Marks.
The same media did not object when Barack Obama appointed the Congolese-born Patrick Gaspard to the post of South African ambassador. Gaspard was an anti-white activist and black nationalist that Obama got to know in his Chicago days.
Mrs Lana Marks was born in East London, South Africa and attended Clarendon High School for Girls. Apart from English, she also speaks Xhosa and Afrikaans. Previously there were French, Dutch and Russian ambassadors able to speak Afrikaans, but Mrs Marks is the first American ambassador fluent in the language.
Apart from Hollywood celebrities whom she counted among clients for her handbags, Mrs Marks was a friend of the deceased Princess Diana of the United Kingdom, who equally owned a Lana Marks handbag.
She emigrated from South Africa at the age of 23, after getting married to a British psychiatrist who had worked at the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town.
In her youth, she was an avid tennis player who participated in various professional tournaments, such as the French Open. Because the media are disputing the fact that she played tennis professionally, she has released the above photograph of herself at Roland Garros in 1978.
