I was about 11 years old the day my father walked into the kitchen one afternoon to find me trying to tip a 1.5-litre jug of cream soda-flavoured squash into the sink. A consummate workaholic, he was hardly ever home that early in the day, and I knew I was in a world of trouble when I heard his voice behind me, booming, “What do you think you’re doing?” I figured I could talk my way out of this one by explaining the sound logic behind my wastefulness: I had accidentally added too much squash concentrate to the jug before filling it with water. It was way too sweet to drink. I needed to start over.
But my dad wasn’t buying any of it. After reminding me that it was his money that I was trying, literally, to pour down the sink, he meted out my punishment: I would drink the entire 1.5 litre jug of over-sweetened cream soda squash that was my clumsy creation until it was finished, no matter how long this took.
So it was that I spent a little over a week of my youth working my way through the most sickly-sweet, disgusting, artificially-flavoured chemical concoction I have ever had the misfortune to consume. I was, of course, entirely deserving of this sanction. I had to take responsibility for my own mischievous experimentation.
The experience created a core memory that I have never forgotten. The sight or smell of cream soda still triggers my gag reflex. I can’t even watch anyone else drinking it.
I was reminded of my father and his cream soda punishment earlier this month, when the years-long, racially-divisive international disinformation campaign waged by the lobby group AfriForum culminated in US President Donald Trump signing the executive order, “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa”.
AfriForum’s most high-profile leaders — Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets — have spent the past fortnight having to swallow several litres of their own, over-sweetened cream soda concoction.
Since its formation in 2006, AfriForum has gained notoriety for championing issues pertaining to what it calls the unjust oppression of “the Afrikaner community” — the definition of which I doubt extends to black and coloured Afrikaners.
The story of AfriForum’s foreign affairs dalliances is one of hubris fuelled by vanity and self-importance.
The organisation has worked hard to foment hostility towards its own country’s government among the elected representatives of foreign states. It’s leaders have revelled in the attention of international right-wing pundits, news publications, think-tanks and politicians — in the US, but also in Australia and some of the more sinister corners of Europe’s right-wing political scene.
The text of Trump’s executive order is a beat-for-beat rendition of the disinformation campaign mounted by AfriForum in the US since 2018. From the entirely false claims of “land confiscations” to Kriel’s description of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act as a “loaded gun in the hands of anti-Afrikaans racists” and part of an attempt by the ANC to commit “ethnic cleansing” against Afrikaners, the entire order is covered in AfriForum’s sticky fingerprints.
The executive order’s provision for the resettlement of white Afrikaners through the US refugee assistance programme echoes a March 2018 proposal by Australia’s then-minister of home affairs, Peter Dutton — now leader of the opposition Liberal (read: conservative) Party — to fast-track visas for white South African farmers on humanitarian grounds, through the country’s refugee system. Dutton insisted that the white farmers were in urgent need of assistance from what he called “a civilised country like ours”.
When asked what brought about this sudden enthusiasm for refugee resettlement in a notoriously anti-immigration party, Dutton said: “If you look at the footage and read the stories, you hear the accounts, it's a horrific circumstance they face.”
Later that year, AfriForum representatives boarded flights to Australia to meet conservative MPs, address Australian parliamentary committees and press their case.
The story of AfriForum’s foreign affairs dalliances is one of hubris fuelled by vanity and self-importance. It’s a parable about children playing at being grown-ups and having to swallow the consequences of their grave miscalculation.
Back-pedalling their earlier claims and downplaying their contribution to this latest diplomatic crisis has not helped AfriForum evade the consequences of their recklessness. Former deputy CEO, Ernst Roets has had to step down from his leadership position. And now that the organisation has outlived its usefulness to their agenda, the Trump administration is no longer entertaining the overtures and meeting requests of AfriForum’s remaining office-bearers.
There is a lesson here for unelected leaders with pretensions of geo-political heft: Every so often, negative campaigns waged abroad to curry favour with international audiences will find their way back home to you and blow up in your own face.
This is not to say there should be no space at the foreign policy and international relations table for civil society and non-governmental organisations or sectors. International cooperation and solidarity are cornerstones of the work of responsible leaders of civic, business and labour organisations.
Witness the flourishing of the 13 engagement groups — among them women, business, civil society, youth and labour — whose independent dialogues will complement the programme of inter-governmental engagements over the course of South Africa’s presidency of the G20 this year. The operative words here — as everywhere — are “responsible” and “leadership”.
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