Afriforum Sues Ntshavheni for R500 000
Solidarity is suing Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni for R500,000 in the Pretoria High Court, over a cabinet statement that accused the union of running a misinformation campaign in Washington. The case sits inside a wider dispute. Ntshavheni has called Solidarity’s actions treasonous, confirmed a treason investigation in parliament, and floated regulating civil society groups. Farm murder statistics remain contested between the police, AfriForum and TAU SA, with no single agreed figure. Solidarity and AfriForum say they turned to Washington only after the ANC repeatedly refused to meet them at home.
The lawsuit
Solidarity has filed a defamation claim against Ntshavheni in the Pretoria High Court, seeking R500,000 in damages and a retraction of a paragraph from a post cabinet briefing published in March 2025. That paragraph accused Solidarity and AfriForum of running a misinformation campaign abroad, which Ntshavheni’s affidavit says convinced US President Donald Trump that a genocide of white farmers is happening in South Africa.
Ntshavheni made the statement in her capacity as cabinet spokesperson, not as a private citizen. If Solidarity wins, the state pays the damages. But the ruling would also test whether an individual minister can carry personal legal liability for words delivered on behalf of cabinet as a whole, a precedent with implications well beyond this case.
A wider pattern
The lawsuit follows a series of escalating moves from Ntshavheni against the two organisations. In May 2025 she called Solidarity’s actions treasonous, accusing the group of inciting foreign interference and undermining national sovereignty. She has since confirmed in parliament that Solidarity and AfriForum are under investigation for treason, and has raised the possibility of regulating civil society groups.
The Government of National Unity includes the DA and other smaller parties, but the ANC retains the presidency and the ministries driving this dispute, including the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, DIRCO, which sets foreign policy. The DA’s presence in the GNU has not altered any of the ANC’s positions toward Solidarity or AfriForum.
The statistics dispute
Ntshavheni’s defence rests partly on the claim that Solidarity’s farm murder figures are not supported by the South African Police Service. But SAPS and AfriForum have repeatedly produced different numbers for the same periods. In the second quarter of 2023, SAPS recorded 14 farm murders against AfriForum’s count of 24 for the same quarter. For the final 3 months of 2024, SAPS reported 1 farm murder, while AfriForum submitted documentation for 8 incidents using SAPS’s own definition of a farm attack. Police confirmed only 1 of those 8 against their own criteria, and AfriForum has not issued a public response to that finding.
TAU SA’s longer running dataset, which tracks farm owners, workers, family members and visitors as separate categories going back to 1990, shows a persistent pattern of violence on farms that neither SAPS’s narrower classification nor any single public figure fully captures. There is no single agreed number for farm murders in South Africa. The figure depends entirely on which organisation is counting and what definition it uses.
Why Washington
Solidarity’s memorandum to the Trump administration did not call for South Africa to be punished. It asked Washington to pressure the ANC specifically on the Expropriation Act, farm murders, the Bela Act and language rights, and on what it described as South Africa’s foreign policy alignment.
Both organisations say they raised these issues with ANC ministers domestically first, and that those requests were not answered. This is the same pattern documented at the 2 July 2026 meeting between Afrikaner civil society organisations and US Ambassador Brent Bozell III, where AfriForum’s Kallie Kriel told the ambassador directly that the intention was to see action against the individuals responsible for ANC policy, not punishment of the country itself. Full coverage of that meeting is available here: https://youtu.be/3J1A8nMSLS4.
What this case actually turns on
The Pretoria High Court will not be asked to rule on whether a genocide is taking place. Ntshavheni’s own affidavit does not claim Solidarity used that word. Her argument is that the memorandum’s farm murder framing was reasonably understood by cabinet to imply it. Solidarity’s defence is built on that gap, and on the ANC’s refusal to engage domestically before the matter escalated abroad.
