Afrikaner group makes a sho't right to Europe to campaign for more support against ‘SA race laws’

Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands ahoy! The Solidarity Movement is taking its campaign on the road. 

The Solidarity Movement is the umbrella body for a range of Afrikaans interest groups including AfriForum and the union Solidarity, and it includes the online news publication Maroela Media. According to its website, it represents 600,000 Afrikaner families, or 2 million individuals in South Africa.

Fresh from the success of drawing the attention of US President Donald Trump’s administration to the supposed plight of white South Africans, the Afrikaner group now has Europe in its sights.

Jaco Kleynhans, the Solidarity Movement’s head of international liaison, confirmed to Daily Maverick this week that its delegates would visit European countries “within the next two months”. 

And we at Solidarity will now intensify our international campaign. We will NOT back down. https://t.co/sfTyrtE1Cc

— Jaco Kleynhans (@JacoKleynhans) February 12, 2025

This follows a post on social media platform X on 12 February in which Kleynhans pledged that the movement would “intensify our international campaign”.

‘Racial discrimination’ and ‘misinformation’

Daily Maverick had contacted the Solidarity Movement to ask what form this international campaign would take, given the firestorm of controversy that has erupted in South Africa since Trump signed an executive order on 7 February offering refugee status to Afrikaners “who are victims of unjust racial discrimination”.

The executive order is partially based on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signing of the Expropriation Bill into law towards the end of January. It allows the state, through legal processes and under various conditions, to expropriate land in the public interest.

Two Government of National Unity partners, the DA and Freedom Front Plus, believe the Act is unconstitutional. Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Groenewald, who is also the Minister of Correctional Services, recently told Carte Blanche that he was not against international interest in local affairs. He pointed out that before the ANC came into power, it “went all over the world and asked countries to put sanctions against South Africa for [its] cause”.

Meanwhile, in reaction to Trump’s executive order, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said it “lacks factual accuracy, and fails to recognise South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid”.

It added: “We are concerned by what seems to be a campaign of misinformation and propaganda aimed at misrepresenting our great nation.”

Trump, and those who have fed him information or misinformation, purport that the Expropriation Act is designed to unfairly target Afrikaner – or white – people. His executive order, along with threats of further sanctions against the South African government, was seen as stemming from sustained lobbying from certain groups in South Africa.

And this leads back to the Solidarity Movement. Indeed, a Solidarity Movement press release from earlier this month that relates to Trump said: “During the past few years, the movement has been in contact with various US politicians to ensure that South Africa’s relations with the US do not run aground.”

This is ironic given Trump’s antagonistic stance towards South Africa. It suggests the Solidarity Movement may have overplayed its hand in the saga, although its view is that Trump’s executive order came about because of “reckless” ANC policies.

The narrative Trump is using against South Africa – that white South Africans are being persecuted on the basis of race – has been widely rejected in this country, with some accusing AfriForum, in particular, of being “treasonous”.

Yet the plans for a European roadshow suggest that the Solidarity Movement is uncowed – and, in fact, doubling down.

International itinerary

Kleynhans told Daily Maverick that the organisation’s initial foray will be to Washington, DC, “soon” in order to “discuss various issues with the American government”.

But that is just a small part of its planned trip: “Our campaign will also focus on all the member countries of the G20 [Group of 20] and, in particular, European countries where we already have good relations.”

In addition to the US, the G20 member countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and the UK. (The EU and, since 2023, the AU are also members.)

“Visits to the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Austria and Italy will take place within the next two months,” said Kleynhans.

He has already spoken in the Netherlands on at least one occasion (in December 2018, in his capacity as one of the leaders of the Orania Movement, the whites-only enclave in the Northern Cape).

Seemingly on the same trip, however, it was reported that South African expats in the Netherlands had successfully lobbied to prevent him from carrying out another speaking engagement.

It remains to be seen whether the Solidarity Movement will face any resistance on the forthcoming tour.

‘Increasing alienation of minorities’

Daily Maverick asked Kleynhans what, broadly speaking, the message of the international campaign would be. 

“As regards foreign policy, we are very critical of steps that the South African government has taken in recent years which have alienated our Western allies, especially the US. We, therefore, confirm our support for pressure on the South African government to return to a position of true non-alignment,” he said. 

“As regards domestic policy, it is important to us that the world should be aware of the tremendous increase in racial laws in South Africa, and the increasing alienation of minorities through political statements, government policies and laws that lead to discrimination.”

The narrative of “racial laws” has clearly already landed among members of the Trump administration – his executive order lashes South Africa for “government-sponsored race-based discrimination”.

Trump’s stance in this regard seems to have been influenced by past comments made by South African individuals tied to the Solidarity Movement. Its chairperson, Flip Buys, has referred to “the many race laws that make us second class citizens”.

Earlier visits to the US

In May 2018, during Trump’s first term, AfriForum chief executive Kallie Kriel met representatives of The Heritage Foundation, the conservative Washington think-tank credited with drafting many of the policies of the Trump administration, to discuss farm murders and other issues.

Read more: Apartheid’s Stratcom agents viewed influential US Trump ally Edwin Feulner ‘as source of advice’

The stance that criminals are especially targeting white farmers is closely paired with accusations that South Africa is discriminating against Afrikaners. Although killings of farmers – like all murders – are a problem in South Africa, certain perceptions about the issue spread the “white genocide” narrative of white people being specifically and predominantly targeted.

A few months after AfriForum’s visit to the US, Trump posted on X: “I have asked Secretary of State [Mike Pompeo at the time] to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers.”

Ramaphosa caused anger with his response, given to a Bloomberg interview, that there “are no killings of farmers or white farmers in South Africa”. He termed Trump’s tweet “clearly misinformed”.

Repeat international campaigns

AfriForum’s visit to the US then was part of a wider international tour that may echo the Solidarity Movement’s planned activities in 2025. An AfriForum statement from 2018 said: “Representatives of AfriForum are currently in Australia as part of this civil rights organisation’s international campaign against farm murders, where they are relating the stories of victims of farm attacks and farm murders.” 

Read more: What the latest crime stats suggest about farm murders

One of AfriForum’s star delegates on the Australian trip was its erstwhile community safety head, Ian Cameron, who is now a DA MP and the chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police. 

In this capacity, he has recently been outspoken about gang violence including murders in the Western Cape, South Africa’s gangsterism capital. This violence mainly plays out in historically poorer Cape Town suburbs where, under apartheid, coloured and black residents were dumped.

While Down Under, Cameron was featured on Sky News Australia, and he addressed the Parliament of Western Australia with a different message. “Members of [Western Australia’s] Parliament are especially shocked by the fact that President Ramaphosa is denying the existence of farm murders in South Africa despite the evidence that already exists, as well as further evidence made public today by AfriForum.”

‘Don’t punish SA’

Now, as the Solidarity Movement sets out on another world tour to spread its message, it wants to keep the harm to South Africans to a minimum. The movement also seems to want Trump to reconsider parts of his executive order.

“It is very important to us at Solidarity that other countries and, in particular, the US realise that withdrawing humanitarian aid from South Africa and imposing sanctions that harm trade will not have the desired effect,” Kleynhans told Daily Maverick.

He said the organisation also worries that sanctions from the US will “increase anti-Western sentiment in the country”.

“This must be prevented and we are working to make a serious plea to the US government, but also to the European Union, that South Africa should not be punished this way,” said Kleynhans.

The Solidarity Move­­ment’s team going to Washington will in­clude Kleynhans, Buys, Kriel and Dirk Hermann.

The South African government is not taking things lying down and will dispatch its own team on a rival international PR campaign in response to US aggression.

Global capitals 

During his State of the Nation Address earlier this month, Ramaphosa announced that a top-level team would visit various global capitals to give a more accurate account of recent government activities, including the signing of the Expropriation Bill into law.

The exact composition of the team has not yet been finalised, Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told Daily Maverick on Wednesday, 19 February. He said it was also not confirmed which countries the envoys will visit.

The Sunday Times, however, reported that the delegates would likely target France, Germany, the EU headquarters in Brussels, China, Brazil and other members of the BRICS grouping to drum up support before heading for Washington. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.