Former Environmentalist Sacked by Tata Steel over Far-Right Past - DutchNews.nl
Tata Steel said it terminated his contract after new details emerged about his role in a far-right student group in South Africa.
- On Tuesday, Tata Steel Netherlands terminated the contract of newly appointed Director of Sustainability and Communications Donald Pols, citing undisclosed ties to a pro-apartheid student organization during his youth in South Africa.
- Revelations emerged that Pols was a member of the far-right Afrikaner Studente Front in South Africa when he was 19 years old, a group opposing the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela.
- Admitting to the past in an interview with NRC, Pols called his involvement "reprehensible behaviour" and "very wrong views," stating he now looks back on his teenage choices with disgust.
- Business director Jessica Mahn assumed his responsibilities on an interim basis, while his former employer Milieudefensie previously noted they were "surprised and deeply disappointed" by his move to Tata Steel.
- Pols, a long-standing climate campaigner who led legal actions against Shell to cut CO2 emissions, had joined the steelmaker on June 1 before the company cited missing recruitment information.
23 Articles
23 Articles
Algemeen Dagblad
Donald Pols was chairman of the Afrikaner Studente Front (ASF) in the early 1990s. It cost him his job at Tata Steel. The country was under high tension at the time, as Bart Luirink witnessed firsthand. He followed the fall of the apartheid regime, first as an anti-apartheid activist and later as a correspondent for the NOS, among others. "The white population was frustrated."
Tata Steel is parting ways with Donald Pols after his far-right past came to light. For years, he called out major corporations as a climate figurehead, but now he is being overtaken by his own controversial past. Who is this man of extremes, who carried a secret with him for years?
Milieudefensie board member Marty Smits confirms that then-director Donald Pols told him in 2021 about his past with the far-right Afrikaner Studente Front in South Africa. "During our conversation, Donald clearly distanced himself from his past on all fronts and expressed remorse," Smits says in a written statement. "In his years at Milieudefensie, Donald dedicated himself to Milieudefensie's mission: a just and equal world," he adds.
Former environmentalist sacked by Tata Steel over far-right past
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