Milieudefensie supervisory board quits over lack of transparency

The supervisory board of environmental campaign group Milieudefensie has stepped down over its failure to inform staff about ex-director Donald Pols’ extreme-right-wing activities in South Africa.

In a statement, chairman Marty Smits said the resignation was intended “to restore calm.”

Acting Milieudefensie director Jaqueline Smit said that staff had been shocked both by the revelations about Pols and the fact that the board had been aware of them for years. “The resulting situation justifies the decision made by the board to resign,” she said.

In an initial reaction, the board said that Pols, who started as director of the organisation in 2015, had told them in 2021 that he had been the chairman of the pro-apartheid Afrikaner Studente Front (ASF) from age 19 to 21. “Donald made it clear at the time that he had distanced himself from his past on all fronts,” Smits said.

Pols, who controversially left Milieudefensie to work as a sustainability officer at Tata Steel, lasted exactly one day in his new job when NRC broke the news about his past.

The ball started rolling when historian Anne-Lot Hoek was sent a photograph which allegedly showed Pols at a demonstration. Other sources later confirmed, he had been at the forefront of the ASF.