Julius Malema and Grace Mugabe helped AfriForum to rapidly grow its membership

AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said that Grace Mugabe and Julius Malema helped to fuel the organisation’s membership growth.

Kriel shared the story of AfriForum’s early years and its growth during a discussion on the Newsday Podcast.

AfriForum was founded on 26 March 2006 as a non-profit civil rights organisation under the umbrella of the Solidarity Movement.

The organisation was created to call up Afrikaners to participate in public debate and actions outside of the sphere of party politics.

It was a challenging time for the organisation. “We were only three staff members, we had no members, limited funds, and a brand-new name,” he said.

“You have to be known before people will support you, and you have to have support before you can achieve success, so it’s a chicken-and-egg situation.”

It started with small, low-cost protests and gained some momentum. However, it was not enough to see big membership growth.

AfriForum’s big break was its campaign against Nestlé, which was buying milk from Grace Mugabe from a farm that was stolen in Zimbabwe.

“When the story broke in a UK newspaper, we realised that it was going to be a mammoth task to take on Nestlé,” Kriel said.

They asked a web designer from Solidarity to set up a one-page site with the domain name nestlebloodmilk.com, borrowing from the ‘blood diamonds’ context.

The site highlighted the torture and human rights abuses happening in Zimbabwe, and provided a link to send a letter of protest to Nestlé’s head office in Switzerland.

“That afternoon, while picking up my children from school, I received a call from the CEO of Nestlé in South Africa wanting to speak immediately,” he said.

“When we met, they informed us that Nestlé had just sent instructions that they would no longer buy milk from that farm.”

The next day, Beeld newspaper ran a front-page article stating that Nestlé had conceded to AfriForum.

“That created the impression of a massive organisation capable of taking on multinational corporations. That was our first major breakthrough,” he said.

Taking on Julius Malema singing, ‘Shoot the Boer’

Another big break for AfriForum came when it launched legal action against EFF leader Julius Malema for singing ‘Shoot the Boer’.

“It was important then, as it is today, that we don’t allow someone to incite violence,” Kriel said in the Newsday interview.

“In that first case, it wasn’t ‘Kill the farmer,’ it was ‘Shoot the boer’. As a parent with children, I don’t want anyone chanting those kinds of things.”

“For many years, people felt frustrated. When you watch television and see these things going wrong, you feel helpless.”

Kriel said that people needed their frustrations heard and wanted someone to tackle those issues head-on. This is where AfriForum stepped in.

“In that process, when we started taking on Julius Malema, we had 8,000 members. We doubled our membership in one year,” he said.

“We actually doubled our membership every year for three consecutive years. It went from 8,000 to 16,000, and then up to 32,000.”

Kriel explained that AfriForum’s membership growth was not the aim of the campaign. Instead, it was a result of action against something people felt strongly about.

“AfriForum should always be a vehicle, not a goal in itself. Our objective is to create a future for our communities, families, and the next generation,” he said.

“That is why we focus on achieving those goals rather than making AfriForum itself the ultimate goal.”

“Our view is that you should never do something merely to gain members. You should do what is necessary.”

“The downstream effect of doing the right thing and doing it well will naturally lead to organisational growth.”

This worked. Today, AfriForum is one of South Africa’s largest and most successful civil organisations with 300,000 paying members.