From: Ernst van Zyl
Head: Public Relations, AfriForum
The Free Market Foundation (FMF) recently announced a liaison and fact-distributing (as opposed to fact-finding) mission to the United States. Except for a few commentators flinging the tired left-wing pejorative “AfriMAGA” at them, for daring to associate with civil rights organisations like AfriForum, the initiative was generally met with overwhelming support from reasonable and rational South Africans.
The running joke in South African conservative circles for over a decade has been: Conservatives take action and build; classical liberals host panel discussions and write opinion pieces. The FMF’s recent change of strategy by embracing realist tactics in the fight to protect private property rights and to oppose racially discriminatory laws and incitement of violence against farmers and minorities in South Africa is therefore quite refreshing.
The future of diplomacy is inevitably going to be increasingly decentralised. Various old barriers, which enabled the suppression of politically inconvenient information for regimes across the globe, including the ANC-regime in South Africa, are in the process of breaking down.
In the face of an unresponsive government, civil society organisations like AfriForum and Solidarity have been trailblazers of this new form of private diplomacy for more than a decade. These organisations have been so successful in making their voice heard internationally, that it has spawned various wild conspiracy theories among their detractors.
The reality is however much simpler and less dramatic. Through the building of contact networks and by establishing themselves as accurate, credible and factual sources of high-quality information, these organisations have been remarkably successful in informing international institutions, human rights bodies, and lawmakers about the politically inconvenient realities of South Africa under ANC rule.
These pioneering organisations understand the ANC’s cold-war-era, Marxist-Leninist modus operandi. The balance-of-forces-formula is simple: When resistance is limited push ahead hard with increasingly radical policies.
When resistance is strong, pause or even backtrack. Resistance in this formula does not primarily consist of fiery criticism, debate victories, or angry letters, but rather real power and means to oppose and resist the National Democratic Revolution. Building alternative institutions, lawfare, real world protest action, state-proofing communities, and international pressure are all swords and shields in this realist counter-revolutionary arsenal.
Since their founding, AfriForum and Solidarity have understood that the only language the ANC listens to is power and therefore, to bring about real change in South Africa, one must become fluent in it.
For decades the ANC-led government has been able to steamroll ahead with their National Democratic Revolution, while dismissing the occasional columnist’s criticism from the sidelines with a scoff or a smug chuckle. In practice, the real challenges to the implementation of the ANC’s extremist, revolutionary agenda, have increasingly come from South Africa’s rich civil society sphere. Experience has taught us that to successfully expose and oppose destructive government policies and corruption, requires much more than merely presenting counter arguments to them from a safe distance or asking them politely. You must roll up your sleeves, enter the arena, and be willing to get your hands dirty, because opposing a regime with tyrannical aspirations is not a walk in the park.
In 2025, after US President Trump signed the Executive Order that escalated the still ongoing diplomatic crisis with South Africa, the ANC’s propaganda machine roared into overdrive by aggressively targeting the abovementioned civic organisations. When the initial desperate scapegoating campaign by government officials and their activist journalist allies failed, the state launched a high treason investigation into AfriForum’s and Solidarity’s leadership, in an attempt to intimate them into silence. James Myburgh wrote a fantastic expose at the time detailing the coordinated propaganda-campaign employed against “AfriSol”, as these organisations are collectively referred to, primarily by ANC apologists.
On the new frontier of decentralised diplomacy, it is critical to not only establish your organisation as a source of high-quality, reliable information combined with decisive and influential action, but also to forge long-term friendships abroad with like-minded individuals and organisations that are natural allies.
Even though I am a conservative, I welcome some of our South African classical liberal allies’ pivot to these realist action-orientated tactics to protect the core constitutional rights that both conservatives and classical liberals value.
The “Oranje Gevaar”-peddlers attacking them for adopting the alternative playbook of AfriForum, should ask themselves whether they genuinely want to see the ANC’s radical revolutionary agenda effectively opposed, or whether they prefer to continue standing in the way of this oncoming Marxist-Leninist train, politely appealing, “Stop, please. It’s the right thing to do.”
The Soviet dissident writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, wrote that, “Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a levelling of mankind into death.”
If the left-leaning liberal critics denouncing the FMF’s new approach agree with Solzhenitsyn in his assessment, as they sometimes claim to, they would welcome a change of tactics from the impotent finger-wagging at the ANC over the past 30+ years.
If Solzhenitsyn is right, the ANC regime reacting with hostility towards those who successfully resist the NDR is a minor storm to weather, compared to the absolute nightmare of violence and destruction that will unfold if the cadres get everything they’ve wished for from their grim Father Christmas lookalike hero, Karl Marx.
Those individuals, organisations, and parties who only oppose expropriation without compensation, racially discriminatory laws, and the realisation of the dystopia where mankind is “levelled into death” when it is convenient and low risk, continue to expose themselves.
Simultaneously, those who are willing to publicly stand by their core principles, adapt their strategies and tactics when necessary, and who throw everything into the fight, even under a relentless propaganda-onslaught, have also stood up to be counted.
The FMF was one of the few organisations that bravely fought shoulder to shoulder alongside AfriForum in the front trenches of 2025. I therefore salute them as their new approach indicates that they recognise the enormity and the urgency of the threat we face.
They know it’s late in the day. If history is as staunchly meritocratic as AfriForum and the FMF, it will look back kindly on the pioneers who remained loyal to their conscience and their principles, even while they received punishment and heckling, instead of reward, for doing so.