Kallie Kriel, CEO of Afriforum, SA’s most powerful civic society organisation, shares uncomfortable truths in this interview with BizNews editor Alec Hogg. The former schoolteacher, whose 18-year-old organisation boasts a vast network and over 300 000 contributing members, says the ANC and other supporters of EWC are spinning a false tune. He says the legislation is deeply malevolent. Among the unspoken consequences is the way this law will empower radical agents right down to a municipal level to attack all property rights – not just land, but any asset – put the onus on victims to fight through an expensive, snail-paced legal system. Kriel remains hopeful that US President Donald Trump’s intervention jolts Pretoria into recanting before the full impact of US economic power is unleashed on SA.
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Edited transcript of the interview
Alec Hogg (00:08.423)
Well, it’s been a long time. In fact, never before have we spoken with Kali Creel, the chief executive of Afroforum, a guy who studied as a teacher, did a political science degree on top of that and started Afroforum 15 or so years ago, maybe nearly 20 years ago. And he will, at the moment he’s in the crosshairs of the ANC. They say that the issues that are happening
Kallie Kriel (00:29.176)
Yeah, I think.
Alec Hogg (00:35.803)
between South Africa and the United States are all his fault. Well, it’s nice to have the man himself who is being blamed for so much with us in the business studio. Kali, thanks for joining us today. Just, I mean, how’s the past few days been for you given that there is so much antagonism from so many quarters at the moment towards you?
Kallie Kriel (00:58.862)
Yes, thank you so much, Alec. It’s great speaking to you. Well, it actually started last week, Monday. Of course, we woke up the morning with regard to that tweet made by President Donald Trump. And of course, on Saturday morning, there was the executive order. I can tell you now in the last nine days or eight days since last Monday, it’s been hectic. But of course, I think it’s also great in the sense that
where we’ve had an ANC government, ANC-led government. Well, the government of national unity actually implements ANC policy, unfortunately, many times. But since even before that, and also still now, you have a government that ignores specifically civil society and people making a point that property rights should be respected.
And of course now I think it opens the table again for discussions to see if we cannot find a solution to make sure that property rights are respected. And because it’s not just for property owners in their interest, we’ve seen in Zimbabwe all people suffer. The economy gets destroyed, you see hyperinflation and people actually leaving the country. That’s why we have between 1 million and 3 million people in the country.
The president should have known that. We wrote to him in April last year stating that this act or the bill then was unconstitutional. He should refer it back to parliament and also stating that it will have dire consequences. The president decided to ignore us. Now we reaping the bitter fruits of that and hopefully the reaction from President Trump will make government rethink.
and we can find solutions to respect property rights.
Alec Hogg (02:55.431)
Can you just tell us a little more about AfriForum and how it has evolved since you started it?
Kallie Kriel (03:02.818)
Yes, we formed 18 years ago. Actually, in March this year, would be 19 years ago. We had three staff members and of course, zero members, zero infrastructure and little money. We are quite thankful for how the organization has grown over the past 18 years. We now have about 200 staff members.
But I think our strength lies in our local structures. We have 177 neighborhood watchers that also in the police don’t do their job as they should. Community takes responsibility for their own safety within the framework of the law. We also have 165 branches that fixes roads, that checks water quality.
that works on refuse dumps, that cleans up towns and a wide variety of projects we have. And those are 80 % of what AFRI forum does is the let’s do it ourselves attitude. And that is liberating because if you say we’re going to be at the mercy of government, then we’re going to lose all hope for the future.
But when you say, well, we’ve got hands, we’ve got a brain, we’ve got a calling to make sure that we build the future that we want for our children, and you take responsibility yourself, then you’re less at the mercy of government. So that is 80 % of our work that fewer people know of. The 20 % of our work is actually what gets the most publicity, and that is our watchdog role.
protection of human rights, protection of language rights, protection of community rights, standing firm for the freedom of the press, standing firm for the rule of law, fighting for property rights. And unfortunately, well, that’s not unfortunate. I think it’s a good thing to have a strong civil society. But that is needed because you have many times that big business and
Kallie Kriel (05:24.588)
I’m not blaming that’s a reality because they do business with government. It’s not always in their interest to be seen as taking on government with regard to what is going wrong. In terms of political parties, it’s a role that they play, but we think that civil society has a good role to play. And we…
actually function if we say we want to influence the realities as a watchdog organization, then we have to see what is at our disposal because we know that the ANC works with a Cold War concept, what they call balance of forces. And of course they use other Cold War terms such as national democratic revolution, emotive forces, motor forces, and of course
anti-revolutionary forces as they would often call us. But within that framework and people that are thinking this is conspiracy theories, just go and read the strategy and tactics document of the ANC, every one of them. And time and time and again, chapter one refers to what they call the balance of forces. And they write, for instance, that in the 1990s with the fall of communism,
the balance of forces was stacked against them internationally. So they had to make concessions towards the free market. They then write in 2008, the banking crisis, then according to their words, discredited capitalism. And now the balance of forces allows them to go towards socialism. We’ve also seen that
in terms of ordinary practical issues here, if you write to a municipality, they think you can do nothing to them, your letter goes to the dustbin. And we’ve seen that in the past with our campaigns against kill the Boer slogan. We’ve seen that with regard to the campaign to retain Pretoria’s name, you are simply ignored. Then you have to say, okay, if they work with balance of forces.
Kallie Kriel (07:42.38)
What are the pressure mechanisms you have at your disposal? And that’s a variety of them. One is, for instance, influencing public opinion. That is on the one side. Then the courts is another pressure mechanism. Sometimes you start a court case by just getting the process going to go into a settlement.
And then municipalities that ignore you, if you start the court case and their lawyers say you have trouble, then they go into a settlement. But public protests is one mechanism. We had a march with more than 10,000 people at the end of last year. But I think an important part is international pressure. But of course, you try to use these other methods first.
to see if you can’t solve the issue. So in terms of public opinion, we tried to say that property rights is something that’s of importance. We’ve seen what happened in Zimbabwe. We’ve seen what happens in Venezuela. But then, of course, that is ignored. You then write to the president, as we did in April last year, saying this is unconstitutional. It’s harmful to the country.
We’re going to lose investments. And in saying, if you not going to adhere to this, we’ll have to go to the court. We are in the process now, but that also did not work. So one of the only methods left is, of course, international pressure. But the interesting thing is we are being accused now of that we are to blame.
That’s our old strategy. The president as well as ANC leaders don’t want to take full responsibility for the negative consequences of their own behavior. And the easy thing is to now identify some kind of a scapegoat. This time it’s not Jan van Ribbeck’s fault. This time it is AFRI Forum’s fault. But of course we did not even engage with the US yet.
Kallie Kriel (10:02.41)
at all with regard to the new expropriation act. That was still something that was in the process for us. But the fact is we believe this executive order signed by President Trump creates the platform to put pressure on the ANC to make sure that we find a solution. Of course, our stance has always been
don’t punish the ordinary people of the country. In terms of AGOA, our colleagues at Solidarity, the trade union, they represent many people that work in factories. And of course, we also have members that are farmers. Those people would be negatively affected by AGOA. So our stance has always been to say, engage the South African government, tell them that property rights.
is one of the criteria that a country has to adhere to to qualify for a GOA and try to convince them. Unfortunately, that has not happened. We will still engage with the US government to say, don’t punish ordinary people because the politicians will continue to sit comfortably, not being affected themselves. If you’re going to punish, then rather focus on those
politicians that are responsible. And we hope we can avert the crisis in that manner.
Alec Hogg (11:37.863)
It’s a very logical argument and one that the way you unpack it, any reasonable person would agree. But the feedback has been you causing trouble where trouble didn’t need to be caused. In other words, that the EWC bill is the same as many other countries have had around the world. And in fact, there’s nothing unusual about this. What is your repost to that?
Kallie Kriel (12:04.909)
Yeah.
Kallie Kriel (12:08.204)
No, the fact is this was a coordinated campaign. We’ve seen bots being used to spread this news or this misrepresentation of what is happening. By coincidence, I even saw a bot that used the photograph of somebody I know. But in the bot, his name was Pete Delaray. In reality, his name is Sara. So those kind of things we know happened.
misinterpretation, but of course there are always those people that simply fall for the government’s agenda, especially also some journalists that don’t think for themselves. But the reality is this, if you look at the expropriation act, we’re not against an expropriation act. As you’ve said, at least they’re right in one regard, most countries do have that act, but the way where it differs…
Successful countries don’t have a clause that makes expropriation possible with no compensation, which is actually no compensation. Also not a clause that is open-ended because the examples of when it can be done that is listed in the act, at the top of it, it says, including but not limited to. So you can have an MK controlled municipality in KwaZulu-Natal that just
things of another criteria. So that is the problem with regard to that. The countries that have expropriation with no compensation is Zimbabwe and Venezuela. If they want examples of where this is. So this is totally not the same. As we’ve seen also, they’ve tried to avert the tension from their own responsibility. But the fact is, if you listen to some of these journalists, even people that…
that you would have expected it better from people that call themselves commentators, not once have they mentioned what is the role of the president and ANC leaders in this process. They simply focus on AFRI forum and when they say what we’ve done, they even lie with regard to what we’ve done. It is not AFRI forum that signed the expropriation act. It’s president Ramaphosa. It’s not AFRI forum that signed the Bella act.
Kallie Kriel (14:36.95)
It was President Ramaphosa. Now they say, you know, President Trump refers to that certain classes of people are treated very badly and they wrote it in capital letters. Now they say that’s not true. But the Bella Act targets the Afrikaans speaking communities cultural survival because Afrikaans schools plays a central role. And that’s the worst thing any government can do. And President Ramaphosa signed it.
It was not AFRI forum that started the process to change Leila Santon Drive to Leila Khalid Drive, which is a person, Palestinian person that used terror to target American citizens. And it was not AFRI forum. was Gula Mokonyane that said it’s great that that name is changed because now the U.S. consulate in that street will now have to put
Leila Khalid’s name onto their letter. It’s not every forum that tried to change Kuman Street and Pretoria Street’s name to Fidel Castro Road and Shea Guvara Road. It was the ANC. It’s not every forum that took Israel to an international court knowing well that they are allies with the US. So you can all, there’s a number of other examples of statements.
by ANC leaders. And now they simply want to deny also the real problem of the expropriation act. I can go into that if you want me to, but that is the real problem. What stands in the expropriation act, the clauses, as well as statements by senior ANC leaders that accompanies that is the real problem and not every forum. So…
Alec Hogg (16:19.175)
Hmm.
Kallie Kriel (16:33.134)
We want to solve it, but we can’t solve it if there’s denialism with regard to what the real problem is.
Alec Hogg (16:41.807)
So what’s the end game here for as far as AFRI Forum is concerned? What would you like to see the consequence being of your efforts?
Kallie Kriel (16:48.44)
Well, we hope that.
Well, we’ve seen President Trump’s strategy with regard to Canada, with regard to Mexico, with regard to the Panama Canal, with regard to Colombia. It gets in quite hard. And then if there’s a settlement, he’s willing to accept such a settlement. We hope we can do the same in this regard. But then you have to have a government that’s not in denialism and that is not arrogant.
So what can be done is to say, we have said we want to find solutions. So we will be engaging with the presidency and the South African government. We will be engaging with the US through the embassy and also other channels that we have with politicians in Washington. Of course, I don’t want to go into the details in that regard, but what
I think can be done is firstly, bring an amendment act to that appropriation act so that property rights are protected. Bring an amendment act with regard to the Bella Act so that there can be cultural recognition for instance, Africanas, but also other cultural communities, broaden mother tongue education. Then something that I think government should really rethink is their foreign policy.
If you have China as your biggest trade partner, but the US as your second biggest trade partner, if you’re going to act in the interest of your own citizens and you only have economy that’s less than half percent of the world economy, then you don’t go and get involved in international fights. It doesn’t matter what you think and you know they have all these moral arguments. The moral argument
Kallie Kriel (18:49.642)
is as a government you have a first responsibility towards your own citizens. And if you’re to do something internationally that harms your citizens, then you are this loyal. And those of us that are fighting against that, we are loyal to the country. We dislike the ANC extremely because of their irresponsible behavior, but we love the country. And that is why we are fighting these issues and they should be.
also then remain neutral and make a commitment to that. And then of course, on a cultural level, which might not be of interest to many business people, but we believe we should focus again on unity and diversity. And you should allow cultural communities to set up, for instance, a university, not make it hard for them to get accreditation for their courses.
allow local communities to play a bigger role in assisting with service delivery. Those kind of things can be done and hopefully we can get there. If not, well then the government will have to take full responsibility, actually the leaders that are responsible and hopefully they will be punished rather than us as normal citizens.
Alec Hogg (20:12.007)
But from the other point of view, they are very clearly turning this around and saying, but AFRI Forum is visiting this problem on us. AFRI Forum went to the United States and has been going there for some years now, engaging with American politicians to get them interested in this, as you say, very small country in their terms, half of under 0.3 % of global GDP. And AFRI Forum are the ones who have managed to get.
Alec Hogg (20:41.265)
President Trump and co to take an interest in South Africa where you would have wondered why. So if you put all of that together, they will presumably say should a GOA be canceled, that it’s AfriForum’s fault. And that is a big part of your own constituency that would be harmed.
Kallie Kriel (21:03.758)
Yes, now of course I would say that because they don’t want to take responsibility for their own behavior and their own ideology. The fact is, do they really think I can take my phone and I call President Trump and say, listen, you have to intervene? Do they really think the Americans can’t read? Do they think the American embassies in South Africa and they’re just enjoying the African sun?
they monitor what’s going on. They’ve got a state department. So it’s actually ludicrous to think that civil society organization in South Africa can prescribe to the world’s strongest nation what they should do. The problems are real. And now they’re saying, no, this expropriation act is not that bad. Unfortunately, you also have business people also at the…
other parties within the G and U that are saying, no, no, it’s not really this bad. But the problem is, if we could avert the crisis by just saying it’s not this bad, then it’s fine if you have that attitude. But do they really think the Americans are stupid? That the Americans will say, oh, know, these people are saying it’s not that bad, so it’s not that bad. They read that.
And they read Section 19-2 of the Expropriation Act. What that says is, of course, if there’s not an agreement with regard to the price of a property and the government decides, expropriation authority, and by the way, that can be any radical municipality can now start doing this, they can then expropriate without
an amount being agreed to. Then they say, no, you can go to court. Well, let’s look at the practicality. Within 180 days, you can go to court, but remember, you’ve already lost your property. And the government can take possession already. So you don’t have that. So you can’t make an income from that. Now you’ll have to go to court. But because this would be an action and not a motion, the difference between the two is action.
Kallie Kriel (23:31.63)
there will have to be evidence left by experts because there’s going to be a dispute on amount. If you’re going to start an action process today in this country, we want to go to the High Court. The first date you can get is in 2028, three years from now. So such a court case will take longer than five years. Now you can imagine, you’re going to lose your land. You have to fight at your own cost in court.
to maybe then get your money in five years time. What would the net effect of that be? People would say, well, they’ve offered me now half of their amount, but at least I’m getting something because I don’t have the government uses taxpayers money. I don’t have the funds to fight this. And in the end, property rights would be infringed. So why people say this is false propaganda.
One can just ask him, go and read 19.2 and then explain to me why this is not a problem. The same with section 12.3. People say no, but there are prescribed examples when there can be expropriation with no compensation. Well, we know that Ronald Lamolla said when they failed to change the constitution that they are simply going to use the EZ 2021.
that they’re simply going to use the majority to allow expropriation with compensation. Last year in October, Paul Machateli, Deputy President said, no compensation is the same as expropriation with compensation. So we look at what they say. We now look at section 12.3. And it is not just those four examples. They say when they mentioned that these are included, but…
It does not not excluding. So there can be other examples that people can think of. radical municipality that is dysfunctional, that is not known for rational decisions can just do that. And now you have to go and fight against that in a five year process. The last thing we’ve got, of course, there’s a lot of problems with the act, but the last one.
Kallie Kriel (25:51.754)
One of the examples they do mention is that if you invest money to make a profit, invest in land to make a profit, and you don’t use it for anything else, then it can be expropriated with no compensation, which I think is going directly into what is normal in investment. You buy something, you want the value to grow, and you can sell it.
They also allow one State Department to expropriate from another, which does not sound as a problem, but if you have an ANC government that wants to expropriate from a DA government, they can use this as a political tool. And then thirdly, they say we need to have control of your land and you’re not doing anything to get control. That makes sense in terms of abandoned buildings.
But many instances with regard to land, land can be occupied, the police don’t act, you have to then go to court to get the people off. And if you want them off, you have to pay for a red ants to come and do it. So it’s actually, can be made hard for people to exercise control. So those are real issues. And that is the problem. The president signed it, he has to take responsibility.
Alec Hogg (27:12.721)
Yeah.
Alec Hogg (27:17.915)
You’ve again, you’ve articulated those arguments very cogently. I’d like to, however, just bring you to two other issues. Just after this proclamation came from the president of the United States, the South African, the South African chamber of business in the United States. Computer crashed by the number of people who want to take advantage.
of his offer to Afrikaners to emigrate there in refugee status. In the interview that our Linda von Tilburg had with Neil Diamond, the chief executive over there, he said that they’d engage with warm bodies of at least 50,000 people, either by email or in person in the last week. So there clearly is a warm reception from many South Africans.
to this offer by President Trump.
Kallie Kriel (28:20.174)
Yes.
Alec Hogg (28:20.259)
You’ve been quoted as saying that, no, people wouldn’t be leaving. Are you changing your mind given what the facts are telling us?
Kallie Kriel (28:30.318)
No, well, I look at the response we’ve got here at AFRI forum and another journalist asked me, so I made certain it’s just under 200 people that have contacted us to find out, which is a small percentage. you look at the reality that we have more than 300,000 members. Well, I can’t say somebody is lying, but I doubt that you would give 20,000.
people just contacting you like that, even if in this situation we are not well known. But maybe let’s say that is true. What we’ve said is we’re not going to give a slap in the face of President Trump. We are thankful for what is done, because for the first time, you have the leader of the strongest nation in the world recognizing the discrimination, as I’ve mentioned, with regard to Bella.
of the Afrikaner community. That is a good thing. For the first time, you have an open pressure with regard to property rights. That is a good thing. So we are not going to be look as if we are not grateful for that by saying, no, take back your offer because the term that has been used in the media is AfriForum rejected.
We never rejected it. We said, and our position has always been, if people want to go, we respect their position and we will not blame them. We’ve actually got a campaign, international campaign called Afriforum Varelveit, where we have a newsletter website. We organize businesses, we list them that are abroad so that other people that
experts can support those businesses. In fact, we have 13 Afrikaans music festivals every year that we support in New Zealand, in Australia, in Dubai, in Amsterdam, in the UK, in Canada, and the US. So in that sense, we respect that if people want to go, but what we’ve said, we never said nobody should go, that’s their own decision. We said that in terms of
Kallie Kriel (30:58.188)
the Solidarity Movement and AFRI Forum, our view is that we have to build a future here, especially in terms of for cultural reasons. If one is English speaking and you go abroad, you will still be English speaking and your children will be English speaking. Afrikaners as a community, of course, individuals can go abroad and there are people that are happy abroad.
But eventually, unlike the Jewish community, we don’t have synagogues that irrespective of in which country you are, you have that binding point. If Afrikaners go abroad, they’ll go to mostly an English church. Their children will go to an English school and eventually they will be, you’ll see a situation where they are assimilated and their grandchildren will not be Afrikaners anymore.
Alec Hogg (31:57.083)
Hmm.
Kallie Kriel (31:57.442)
So that price for us would be too high. And that is why we are saying we’ll keep contact with people that are going, we respect their decision, but for us, we want to stay here. And we’ll also explain that to the Trump administration that this is not being not grateful, but we see our future here on the southern tip of Africa.
Alec Hogg (32:21.613)
And there’s no doubt that if you were to have tens of thousands of South Africans leaving the country, the tax base, the skills, the devastation that’s wrought on the economy would be really poor. just to close off with, I spoke with Rob Hurshoff, a capitalist activist and very well known and very outspoken person. And he said he sees absolutely no chance in the ANC backing down their history, their national democratic revolution obsessions.
Kallie Kriel (32:30.03)
Hmm.
Yes.
Kallie Kriel (32:38.446)
Yeah.
Alec Hogg (32:51.303)
means that they are going to take this to the brink. And he reckons we could see, not he, could, he said he will, we will see a 1985 repeat where after the Rubicon speech, the international community and particularly the Americans withdrew all support from South Africa, including they refused to roll over any South African loans and that collapsed the economy. Interest rates, 25%, thousands of businesses went bust, hundreds of thousands of people were retrenched and made unemployed.
Is that a scenario that you would take seriously?
Kallie Kriel (33:25.378)
Yes, that’s unfortunately so, but I don’t want to scare people off. The fact is we still have an ability to do what we can. Nothing in life is inevitable. Maybe one’s chances are slim, but we believe that this action by President Trump is the best chance we have to avert actually…
what the possibility is that Rob mentioned to you. And it might sound like a paradox. How can a threat of action stop action? But that is how it works. A threat like this can maybe get them to rethink. If they don’t, at least we can say we did everything we can. I can tell that to my children and my grandchildren. But even if that happens,
because we have an attitude to say we are not going to put ourselves at the mercy of President Ramaphosa or the ANC. We are going to do what we can to survive. It won’t be easy. It will be harsh. But in the past, there has been terrible situations that had to be overcome. So we’ll be ready for the challenge. But…
I must tell you, we must not stop holding the ANC and President from a pause are accountable. And we should not fall for this blame culture. If we simply gonna continue blaming someone else, if it’s not AFRI forum, it’s Elon Musk or whoever, or Trump, that’s not gonna solve it. It’s time for introspection, recognize what the problem is and solve that. That’s the only chance we have.
Alec Hogg (35:23.601)
Just to close off with in a previous interview with France Crognet, he said that everybody’s missing the point on both the EWC and the Bella Bill. The Bella Bill, he says, is not only a threat to Afrikaans, but further up the line, it’s a threat to, it’s really a fight between parents deciding on their education for the children and the state deciding on the education for the children. And as far as EWC is concerned, he pointed out that it’s not just land, it’s all property, shares, homes.
Kallie Kriel (35:45.859)
Yes. Thanks.
Alec Hogg (35:53.275)
You name it. If you get a vindictive or malevolent government according to France, well, they could apply the law in that way too. But Kali Kriel, thanks for outlining the practicalities that concern you. He’s the chief executive of AfriForum. I’m Alec Hogg from BizNews.com
Read also:
- Rob Hersov: Crunch time for SA and with ANC dogma dominant, no escaping disaster
- Helen Zille: DA has filed to have “unconstitutional” Expropriation Act nullified
- Frans Cronje on Trump v ANC: The Uber Truth – SA running risk of ’85-type sanctions
