Xavier Pierre Malaprade
(This article was written by an honours student at the University of Hertfordshire in England and submitted to the Solidarity Movement. It provides a summary of recent political events in South Africa from an international perspective.)
South African politics has slowly but steadily regained international attention after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order cutting US funding to the country, shortly after President Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act into law. This law allows the government to expropriate private property with zero compensation.
President Trump’s decision coincided with the Washington Memorandum, presented by a delegation in Washington DC. This delegation included high-ranking members of the civil rights lobby group AfriForum, the trade union Solidarity (previously known as the Transvaal Miners’ Association from its founding in 1902 until 1913 and the Mine Workers’ Union from then until 1997, and the broader Solidarity Movement (of which both organisations are member institutions). The delegation met with representatives of President Trump’s administration, during which the parties discussed several concerns that they felt had remained unaddressed, or even exacerbated, by the ruling party.
Additionally, President Trump has ordered the establishment of provisions to allow white South Africans to be resettled in the United States as political refugees. While many have applied for the programme out of disillusionment with South Africa’s political system, others – including the Solidarity Movement and residents of the Afrikaner cultural settlement of Orania – have expressed a preference for the United States to instead “help us here”.
[The presenter in the video is Mr Joost Strydom, the leader of the Orania Movement, the organisation responsible for promoting and maintaining the cultural settlement under South African constitutional law. He has gone on record in an interview with Newzroom Afrika to discuss the frequent xenophobic remarks and rhetoric directed at Afrikaners.]
During the delegation’s visit, Dr Ernst Roets (former deputy CEO of AfriForum and Head of Policy at the Solidarity Movement) was interviewed by renowned journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson. Carlson is known for, among other things, his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Russo-Ukrainian War. In the interview, Dr Roets discussed the context surrounding current events in South Africa. In response to the US cutting funding, the uMKhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, founded and led by former president Jacob Zuma – who has faced several charges of corruption over the years – subsequently made a public bid to prosecute AfriForum for treason.
Since the visit, there has been a massive uproar on both sides of the political aisle within South Africa. A notable example is the slew of death threats issued by Mr Mehmet Vefa Dag, president of the Truth and Solidarity Movement Party (and former spokesman of the now-defunct Land Party), on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Mr Dag called AfriForum’s CEO Kallie Kriel a “terrorist” and demanded that he “be hanged in Sharpeville as an example for humanity,” attaching a photograph of a noose and gallows alongside one of Mr Kriel for added emphasis.
After receiving intense backlash in response to his demands and his post being removed for violating X’s rules, Mr Dag doubled down by attaching a screenshot of his earlier post to a new one, which reads as follows:
We don’t support AfriForum. We don’t support Kallie Kriel. We don’t support Ernst Roets. We don’t support Ian Cameron[.] We don’t support Corne [sic] Mulder[.] We stand with justice, equality, morality and righteous doing. Censorship and intimidation will not work. Continue the good fight.
The Truth and Solidarity Movement Party has made no statements regarding Mr Dag’s behaviour and language, nor has any action been taken by the authorities concerning his blatant incitement of violence against members of the public. Aside from his other controversies – most notably the several charges of domestic and sexual abuse that were levied against him last year (including the rape of his eldest daughter) – Mr Dag also has a history of using antisemitic and homophobic language on various public forums and sites. The Truth and Solidarity Movement Party also officially supports land redistribution, similarly to the EFF – a party whose members are also known for using violent language and rhetoric against Asian and white South Africans, particularly white farmers. According to various statistics, white farmers have been major targets of especially violent criminal attacks over the years.
Aside from the Solidarity Movement and President Trump, several other opponents have emerged against the ANC’s agenda of legalising Expropriation Without Compensation (or “EWC”). Theo de Jager, head of the Southern African Agri Initiative (Saai), has been an outspoken critic of the government on this matter and several others. He recently wrote an open letter to President Trump concerning his approach and response to South Africa’s current affairs. Some time later, De Jager was edited out of a photograph of the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development’s recent delegation to Germany, as used in the Department’s official publication. The reason for this omission has not been explained.
Furthermore, a major agricultural organisation in the Free State province, Free State Agriculture, recently launched a survey among its members to determine whether they supported FSA severing ties with its parent organisation, AgriSA, who openly supports the ANC and its stances regarding land reform and opposition to the United States on a number of geopolitical matters. The results have not yet been released at the time of writing, but FSA has openly opposed the government (and, by extension, AgriSA) on these matters.
Xavier Pierre Malaprade was born in 2003 in Orleans, France, to Afrikaner parents from the former Transvaal, who subsequently moved to England. The second of three children and son of Jacques and Erica Malaprade (née Eloff), he grew up in Caversham, an eastern suburb of Reading, Berkshire. Despite his expatriate upbringing, his family frequently spoke Afrikaans at home, and he developed a strong sense of his cultural identity and heritage as an Afrikaner and as a descendant of the Voortrekkers as he grew older.
After discovering a natural fondness for literature and history, and learning more about the plight of his ethnic brethren overseas, he was moved to pursue a career in journalism in the hopes of exposing corruption and bringing popular attention to the truth. He is now completing his final year of a BA Honours in Politics and International Relations and Journalism at the University of Hertfordshire.
