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On the face of it, AfriForum and the MK Party had nothing in common besides a taste for litigation to vent their disdain for the policies of South Africa’s government – before anti-immigrant organisation March & March raised its profile and befriended both.

In the past week, March & March announced a tactical pivot. It’s populist campaigning against immigrants on the streets would now be supplemented by a campaign of litigation against the State.

The tactical pivot was said to be the context for a meeting of March & March and AfriForum this week, from which the two organisations emerged singing from the same hymn sheet about saving South Africa from ANC depravations by leveraging the powers of the courts.

AfriForum, which styles itself as a civil rights lobby group, has been a serial litigant and agitator against government’s transformative policies. It has deep pockets. It claims to be 95% funded by monthly contributions from its members and to exist primarily to represent the interests of Afrikaners. It has played a leading role in the global “White Genocide” disinformation campaign against South Africa championed by US President Trump. 

March & March said this week it wants to be a civil rights lobby group, like AfriForum, and could learn from the AfriForum’s experience. 

In the busy buildup to the 30 June deadline that March & March imposed for all undocumented immigrants to have left the country, a period of mass mobilisation across the country, the organisation vehemently denied that it had significant funding. Now it wants to be like AfriForum, but where will the money to litigate against the State come from?    

If March & March and AfriForum consolidate their relationship, where does that leave the MK Party, which has furiously courted March & March since the latter ramped up its anti-State rhetoric last year.

Like March & March, MK claims not to have significant funding – though it appears increasingly able to afford to litigate this year.

So, what’s going on? Is it simply a case of my enemy’s enemy is my friend, or is it something more sinister such as an organised adjustment of conservative forces hell-bent on reclaiming South Africa in some shape or form, for some or other group?

AfriForum certainly has the connections to secure funding from conservative individuals and organisations, at home and abroad. Is this the assistance March & March sought? Will MK continue to flirt with March & March after seeing March & March flirting with apartheid apologists? Would AfriForum fund MK in pursuit of common conservative/identity-based objectives?

The GOOD Party encourages all South Africans of voting age who are dissatisfied with the country’s trajectory to use the ballot box to vote for better. South Africans suffered grievously for the regular free-and-fair elections that democracy gifted us for the purpose.

Issued by GOOD Secretary-General Brett Herron