{"id":284636,"date":"2018-11-16T09:54:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T07:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=284636"},"modified":"2018-11-16T09:54:12","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T07:54:12","slug":"trump-to-appoint-20000-handbag-designer-as-south-african-ambassador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/284636\/trump-to-appoint-20000-handbag-designer-as-south-african-ambassador\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump to appoint $20,000 handbag designer as South African ambassador"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump will appoint luxury handbag designer Lana Marks as the new ambassador to South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>A statement from the Whitehouse read:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Today, President Donald J. Trump announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Lana J. Marks of Florida, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to South Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Ms. Marks is the founder and CEO of Lana Marks Ltd., Inc., a luxury fashion accessories producer. She served on the Women\u2019s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Women\u2019s International Forum for more than a decade. Ms. Marks attended the University of the Witwatersrand and the Institute of Personnel Management in Johannesburg, South Africa. She speaks Afrikaans and Xhosa.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Trump caused a stir back in August when he asked his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to study the seizure and expropriation of land in South Africa, along with the killing of farmers.<\/p>\n<p>Trump posted a note on Twitter, alleging the South African government was \u201cseizing land from white farmers\u201d.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I have asked Secretary of State <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SecPompeo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@SecPompeo<\/a> to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. \u201cSouth African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TuckerCarlson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@TuckerCarlson<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FoxNews?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@FoxNews<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/1032454567152246785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 23, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The South African government called Trump&#8217;s tweet \u201cmisinformed\u201d.<\/p>\n<div class=\"font-roboto regular color-black-2 f4 line-height-1-5 mb20 story-copy\" dir=\"auto\" data-rc-highlight=\"story\" data-qa-component=\"item-story\">\n<p>Reuters reported that the US has not had an ambassador in South Africa since Patrick Gaspard vacated his post in December 2016.<\/p>\n<p>The website for her premium handbag firm, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lanamarks.com\/store\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lana Marks<\/a>, offers handbags selling for as much as $20,000 and says they have become favourites for celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Kate Winslet and Madonna, Reuters said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/267117\/trump-misleads-again-with-claim-of-south-africa-farm-murders\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trump misleads again with claim of South Africa farm murders<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump will appoint luxury handbag designer Lana Marks as the new ambassador to South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":266873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-284636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284636"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284668,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284636\/revisions\/284668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}