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The civil rights organisation AfriForum’s active membership just reached 150 000. This organisation’s membership only stood at 8 000 in January 2010 and thus grew exponentially during the past six years.

According to Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, the strong growth in membership means that AfriForum is currently able to embark on a new phase which entails not only undertaking more campaigns and actions at national level, but also the expansion of the organisation’s do-it-yourself actions in local communities.

Kriel stated that AfriForum’s campaigns are financed by its members and that each and every one of the 150 000 members can thus be proud of their own role in the successes already achieved by AfriForum and those that will still be achieved in future. “AfriForum’s power is thus located in its members and therefore AfriForum would like to thank each of its members for their continuous support,” said Kriel.   

According to Kriel, the fact that one political party in South Africa dominates election after election means that the creation of strong civil society organizations are crucially necessary to ensure that Government is held accountable. “150 000 members give AfriForum the necessary muscle power to fulfil this role with greater effectiveness, and the still growing membership will ensure that this muscle power will in future become even bigger,” concluded Kriel.      

Kriel said that AfriForum’s local structures already successfully executed approximately 200 do-it-yourself projects across the country during the first 10 days of October 2015, which included, amongst others, mass patrols by the organisation’s neighbourhood watches, the repair of potholes in roads, planting of trees and the cleaning up of towns, cemeteries and garbage dumps. “AfriForum will now expand these actions further and also begin with a process to recover the costs thereof from the municipalities, seeing as it is the work of the municipalities which they neglect to do in many communities,” added Kriel.

Issued by AfriForum