Pierre de Vos’ ‘friend’ gives AfriForum a small lesson on racism

Constitutional law expert Prof Pierre de Vos in a Twitter post on Monday made a simple point, in his view, about minority rights group AfriForum.

He has been an outspoken critic of the group.

For those who don’t understand Afrikaans, De Vos explained that a friend of his had “fixed” one of their Facebook messages for them, which said: “Dear friends, guard against making racist comments because it affects the credibility of AfriForum’s Facebook page. Regards.”

De Vos’ friend then “fixed” this by showing how a change to the last part of the message should actually go: “Dear friends, guard against making racist comments because it is wrong.”

AfriForum and its leaders Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets have dominated headlines of late after they travelled to the US to warn investors against land expropriation without compensation in South Africa. They met with many conservative Americans and were even interviewed on Fox News, leading to heavy criticism from, in particular, Wits vice-chancellor Adam Habib.

Kriel then received flak for commenting that, in his view, apartheid had never been a crime against humanity, though he still believed it had been wrong.

This got De Vos’ attention, and he was not impressed. He has since been writing critical columns about the group and tweeting about it.