Julius Malema fuelled AfriForum growth

AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said that they initially struggled to attract members. However, Julius Malema helped them to grow from 8,000 to 300,000 members.

Kriel shared the details about AfriForum’s start and growth during an interview with Gabriel Makin on The Common Sense podcast.

AfriForum was established with three employees and no paying members, led by Kriel under the umbrella of the Solidarity Movement.

The initiative aimed to mobilise minority communities, combat civic apathy, and advocate for constitutionally protected minority rights in public discourse.

After its launch, it had no members, which created a chicken-and-egg situation, where AfriForum had to show successes before people wanted to join.

“People only want to join an organisation that shows proven success. However, generating success requires existing support and resources,” he said.

“It’s a tough task when you have no funds and only three staff members. You can imagine how long it took just to build name recognition,” he said.

“So for the first four or five years, we simply had to put in the hard work to get our name out there and secure those initial victories.”

One of the initial victories was taking on the wife of former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who had taken over a dairy farm from a white farmer and sold milk to Nestlé.

“We heard about it through an article in The Guardian newspaper in the UK, and we decided we were going to take on Nestlé because of it,” Kriel said.

They launched a campaign called Nestleblood.com, named after blood diamonds, which gained great support. 75,000 people wrote letters to Nestlé in a day.

AfriForum won. The Nestlé South African CEO met with Kriel, and she informed Kriel that they were no longer buying milk from Grace Mugabe.

“An Afrikaans newspaper headline said: ‘Nestlé gives in to AfriForum’. Those were the kinds of things we had to do in the early days,” he said.

Julius Malema fuelled AfriForum’s growth

Before Julius Malema and the EFF entered the scene, AfriForum was still a small organisation with 8,000 members.

However, the EFF leader and his attacks on the white and Afrikaans community fuelled the organisation’s membership growth.

While serving as president of the ANC Youth League, Malema sang the struggle song Shoot the Boer.

AfriForum took Malema to the Johannesburg High Court, and in 2011, Judge Colin Lamont ruled that the song constituted hate speech.

The ANC and Malema subsequently appealed, leading to a settlement agreement where they agreed not to sing Kill the Boer or similar songs.

After Malema launched the EFF, he started singing “Kill the Boer” again. AfriForum brought another Equality Court application against Malema.

In 2022, the Johannesburg Equality Court dismissed AfriForum’s case, finding that the song was protected under freedom of expression.

Another case was focused on video footage that showed Malema firing an assault rifle into the air before a crowd at the EFF’s fifth birthday celebrations.

AfriForum laid formal criminal charges and applied pressure to ensure the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) pursued the matter.

Malema was charged and convicted under the Firearms Control Act and sentenced to five years in prison.

AfriForum also laid charges against Malema under the Riotous Assemblies Act after he repeatedly urged supporters to illegally occupy unallocated land.

Although AfriForum ultimately lost the “Kill the Boer” fight and some other battles against Malema, they were good for the organisation.

Conservative Afrikaners supported AfriForum’s actions, believing it fought for their rights as a minority group.

“We had 8,000 members when we started with Julius Malema. It has helped us to grow to 300,000 members,” Kriel said.