Donald Pols. (Photo: NOS News)
Milieudefensie, the Dutch climate pressure group that made world news in 2021 with a historic court victory over the oil giant Shell, was plunged into chaos after its CEO suddenly resigned to join Tata Steel.
However, Donald Pols was summarily dismissed from Tata Steel just one day later because of his so-called pro-apartheid past as a student leader in South Africa.
The 54-year-old Pols, who was born in South Africa, resigned from the environmental organization last month to join steel giant Tata Steel as director of sustainability and communications. This move immediately attracted great criticism because Tata Steel is labeled as one of the biggest polluters in the Netherlands.
Critics asked how a man who helped establish the strategy of lawsuits against individual polluting companies would now work for one of those companies.
However, Pols defended his move and described it as a “logical next step” in which he could make the company more sustainable from within.
The supervisory board of Milieudefensie expressed its disappointment at the decision. According to Marty Smits, the chairman of the Milieudefensie council, they were “surprised by Pols’ departure and very disappointed by his decision to join Tata Steel, one of the biggest polluters in the Netherlands”.
Shortly afterwards, the organization said in an official statement that it “does not understand Pols’ decision at all”.
Tata Steel initially welcomed Pols with great enthusiasm.
“Pols has kept us on our toes for years and we are grateful to him for that,” said Hans van den Berg, chairman of the board of Tata Steel Nederland.
“We need people who keep challenging us, even when it’s uncomfortable. Donald is that kind of person.”
One day in new post
Pols officially started his new job on June 1, but he only survived one day in his new position. On June 2, Tata Steel sent out a statement in which it announced that Pols had been fired.
“Additional information about his background has come to light in recent days and was not previously shared with the company,” the company said.
On the same day the Dutch daily newspaper NRC published an interview with Pols. In this, it came to light that as a 19-year-old student in the early 1990s, he was the leader of a far-right student group called the Afrikaner Studente Front (ASF) at the University of Pretoria.
According to the NRCarticle used the ASF Nazi symbols and disrupted speeches by black South African leaders, including Nelson Mandela. The group’s aim was to advocate for a homeland of its own for white Afrikaners and to oppose the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
The newspaper also quoted from a 1991 interview with local media in South Africa in which Pols said “this is our country, and we will not allow it to be taken away from us in such a dictatorial manner”.
“The only way to prevent a massacre is to give the Afrikaner a homeland of his own.”
The information about his past came to light after the historian Anne-Lot Hoek came across Pols’ activities at the time during research for a book on apartheid and NRC gave
Pols said in a later interview that he regretted his actions as a young man.
“There is no justification and I don’t want to justify it either. I am responsible. But I am in no way the person I was back then.”
The main question in the Netherlands was immediately what Milieudefensie knew about Pols’ past and when the organization became aware of it. Shortly after the publication of the newspaper article, Marty Smits admitted that Pols had already informed him of his involvement with the ASF in 2021. According to Smits, at the time Pols “clearly distanced himself from his past on all fronts and showed remorse”.
However, the media storm was too great and Smits resigned as chairman two days later. The rest of the board of supervisors did the same.
The council said in an official statement that “internal distractions must not stand in the way” of the group’s focus on accelerating climate justice. They added that they hope their decision will help restore “peace” in the organization.