https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk8qrbApiek
The Solidarity Movement claim they used their recent trip to Washington, DC, to meet with the US’s power brokers.
However, while its delegation was vocal about the message they sent to Washington, the group has been extremely tight-lipped when it comes to the question of to whom they conveyed this message.
Solidarity Movement spokesperson Werner Human told Daily Maverick last week: “We are not going to provide the details of the individuals we met with. It will compromise the integrity of our discussions, and it will expose them to bombardment by the media and exploitative political parties and individuals.
“What we can confirm is that we engaged in high-level discussions with influential figures, that our meetings were constructive, and that we were warmly received throughout.”
The DA, which visited Washington in late February on its own lobbying campaign, has supplied a much greater level of detail about its trip.
Solidarity Movement leaders have specifically claimed that they met high-ranking US elected politicians from the Republican and Democratic parties. This would amount to extraordinary success for a little-known organisation on the tip of the African continent, given how notoriously difficult it is for lobbyists to get face time with members of the US Congress.
A South African source with lobbying experience in the US capital told Daily Maverick it is “virtually impossible” to get in front of a US senator, congressman or congresswoman as a foreign private group.
Yet here’s what the Solidarity Movement leaders have said on the topic — aside from much more vague references to meeting with “highly influential figures” or “key decision makers”.
On 26 February, AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel told his X followers that they had spent the day meeting with “senior members of the House of Representatives’ committee on foreign affairs”.
In his video, he claimed that the meeting showed it was very clear that members of this committee closely monitored what was happening in SA, down to already knowing what was happening with the Bela Act.
On 27 February, he referred to discussions held “in the US Congress with both Republicans and Democrats” which “confirmed that there is currently anger among those in power in the US over the ANC leaders’ reckless policies and actions”.
The same evening, Kriel told eNCA: “We went yesterday to Congress, spoke to senior people there. They are angry with regard to what is happening in South Africa.”
These claims have created the impression that the Solidarity Movement has the ear of significant politicians and political advisers in the US. The Solidarity Movement has used the frenzy of publicity around its US trip as a marketing tool — potentially useful for an organisation which requires a donation to join.
Lobbying in Washington is a cutthroat game
Lobbying in Washington is a shadowy business, and an expensive one — one former lobbyist has described it as a legal form of bribery.
Foreign countries pay millions of dollars annually to professional lobbyists in Washington to get their causes in front of senators who can advance their interests in Congress.
Open Secrets keeps a tally of money spent by foreign entities on Washington lobbying, at least some of which must legally be disclosed. In 2024, for instance, it recorded that the Democratic Alliance paid $14,975 (almost R280,000) to Washington lobbyists, while SA Tourism paid $370,670 (almost R7-million). There is no record of any fees paid by the Solidarity Movement last year.
The reason these millions are considered worth it is that lobbying is a cutthroat business — and direct access to Congress members, in a country of 340 million constituents clamouring for attention, is very difficult. Even to email a senator directly often requires you to provide an address within their district.
The DA’s investment into Washington lobbying in recent years had paid off, but had required “significant resources”, the DA spokesperson on international relations, Emma Louise Powell, told Daily Maverick on Monday.
Powell said that during the party’s late February Washington trip, their delegation met with, among others, Africa advisers at the National Security Council, Democrat senators from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations including Chris Coons, and the legislative staff director for Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
“We were also, crucially, able to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s key adviser,” said Powell.
The Solidarity Movement’s four-man delegation posted selfies outside the White House of them wearing visitors’ tags, which does suggest that they met with staff members within the institution.
Powell said that based on the location of the photo, which appeared to be taken on the steps of the Eisenhower Building in the White House compound, it was likely that the Solidary delegation had also met with staffers from the National Security Council, “but I do not know what level of staff they would have engaged with”.
Solidarity also posted a picture after a meeting at a Los Angeles restaurant with the right-wing journalist Joel Pollak, who has been ferociously campaigning to be the next US ambassador to South Africa after failing to get the gig during the first Trump administration.
This was the sole visual evidence on social media of a meeting held by the team — other than a video posted by the movement’s international relations liaison, Jaco Kleynhans, of him being interviewed by a right-wing podcaster in a Starbucks coffeehouse.
So who were the high-ranking Democrat and Republican senators, congressmen and congresswomen the Solidarity Movement team say they met?
No record of meeting from House and Senate foreign affairs committees
Another selfie from the trip, posted on 27 February, showed Kriel in front of a plaque reading “Committee on Foreign Affairs”. As previously mentioned, Kriel subsequently tweeted that the delegation had met with senior members of the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee.
If so, it was not an official hearing.
There is no record of a Solidarity Movement meeting with the foreign affairs committee on the committee’s schedule for this year — either for the full committee or the subcommittee on Africa.
Not a single member of the 28-member House committee tweeted any reference to the Solidarity Movement or the supposed plight of white Afrikaners at any point this year — in a climate where, for context, US senators and representatives are posting in an almost frenzied fashion about their current meetings and activities, either to curry favour with President Donald Trump or to distance themselves from him.
During this period, the members of the foreign affairs committee tweeted about meeting with delegations from Tunisia and expressed concern about political intolerance in Uganda.
Yet, despite Kriel’s claim that the members of the committee follow South African affairs so closely that they are even familiar with, and angered by, the Bela Act, just one tweeted any reference to South Africa this month.
That was Joe Wilson, a Republican representative from South Carolina who recently introduced a proposed Bill to manufacture a new $250 note featuring the face of Donald Trump — because “the most valuable bill [should be] for the most valuable president”.
Wilson tweeted on 3 February, some weeks before the Solidarity visit: “South Africa aligns itself with Iranian terrorists, harassing Jewish civilians, while pretending to be a major world power. Cutting off South Africa is long overdue. Trump will fix it.”
On 24 February, again before the Solidarity visit to Congress, he tweeted: “Working against peace is the new platform of the African Union and their diabolical attempts to sabotage the Abraham Accords, harming the achievements of President Trump! Israel’s African alliances remain, unbroken at the hands of failed dictator Cyril Ramaphosa.”
Notably, neither of these two critiques contain any mention of the plight of white South Africans, the Bela Act, Afrikaners, or the supposed scourge of race-based laws. Instead, their major focus is Israel.
Congress opposition to SA is about Israel, not Afrikaners
This is something that appears true more widely: the pushback to South Africa from the US Congress has up till now been almost exclusively about South Africa taking Israel to the International Court of Justice, rather than Afrikaners.
It is also noticeably linked to Maga-supporting Republicans, making Kriel’s claim that they received a sympathetic hearing from Congress Democrats even more surprising.
Six little-known Republican members of Congress, including Wilson, called on the US in October 2024 to axe the Agoa trade agreement. The motivation cited Israel, China, corruption and domestic femicide: again, no mention of Afrikaners or farm murders.
Four of the six then followed up, on 11 February, with a letter calling on Trump to sanction Pretoria’s “ethnonationalist gangster regime”. This call now added the false claim that Pretoria “has for years attempted to expropriate land from native South Africans without compensation”, but without citing any specific legislation. Once again, no mention of Afrikaners or farm murders; once again, the focus of the complaint is Israel and China.
There have been a number of Bills introduced to Congress over the past few years aimed at censuring South Africa, which invariably have cited either Israel or the undermining of “US national security or foreign policy interests”.
A Bill from February 2024 in the House of Representatives included enough detail about South Africa to mention Transnet by name in condemning corruption, and still at no point dealt with discrimination against white South Africans.
No Senate meeting with Solidarity Movement either
Who else might the Solidarity Movement have been meeting with? Two international relations specialists consulted by Daily Maverick said that probably the most impactful possible body would be the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
A US source with direct knowledge of the committee’s activities told Daily Maverick last week that no meeting with the Solidarity Movement had taken place.
There is also no record of any scheduled engagement on the committee’s website; its members have been tied up recently hearing about “the malign influence of the People’s Republic of China at home and abroad”.
The last time Congress had a hearing on South Africa was relatively recently, in 2023, and those who addressed it were Professor Anthony Carroll, journalist Redi Tlhabi and Good Governance Africa’s Chris Maroleng.
Despite the Solidarity Movement’s claims that they have spent years cultivating the ear of Washington insiders, those relationships had not borne sufficient fruit less than 18 months ago for Kriel and Co to wangle an invitation.
That was, however, under Joe Biden’s presidency.
The second Trump presidency has ushered in a new climate — one which is even more fervently pro-Israel and opposed to any mention of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).
Suddenly, South Africa is a very useful foil, being framed — to quote Tucker Carlson’s interview with former AfriForum CEO Ernst Roets — as “what happens when you take DEI seriously”. In other words, South Africa’s post-democracy governance issues are being used to legitimise a racist agenda in the US — and figures like the Solidarity delegation may indeed find that new doors are open to those willing to tell stories about anti-white discrimination.
In his Starbucks interview, Kleynhans said: “We are going to work with the White House on the implementation of this [executive] order… We have an open door to influence.”
Perhaps. But South Africans might also want to be a bit sceptical of the scale of influence and access this private members’ group is claiming to have on and to the corridors of power in Washington. DM