Donald Pols, the former director of Dutch environmental group Milieudefensie, has been dismissed from his new role as Chief Sustainability Officer at Tata Steel Netherlands, just one day after starting the job.
The steel giant announced the termination on June 2, citing information about Pols’ background that “came to light” after his appointment was finalised and had not been disclosed to the company during the recruitment process.
A past he kept hidden
The background in question is deeply troubling.
According to NRC, Pols was, at the age of 19, chairman of the Afrikaner Studente Front (ASF).
This was an extreme-right Afrikaner student movement in South Africa that actively opposed the ANC, Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid organisation, and fought to preserve the apartheid system.
Apartheid, meaning “separateness” in Afrikaans, a language with deep Dutch roots, was a state-enforced policy of racial segregation that brutally oppressed South Africa’s Black majority population.
The ASF attempted to prevent ANC speakers from addressing audiences at South African universities.
A report in the Chicago Tribune from April 30, 1991, described an incident at the University of Pretoria in which hundreds of far-right white students disrupted a speech by Mandela, fighting with his bodyguards and burning an ANC flag.
Pols was quoted in that report, and NRC says three witnesses identify him as the person burning the flag in video footage, though Pols himself initially recognised himself in the footage before later denying it.
Pols speaks out
In an interview with NRC, Pols acknowledged his membership in the ASF, calling it “reprehensible behaviour” and “very wrong positions.”
He described his past as a youthful mistake made during an “extremely turbulent time,” saying he was 19 and felt drawn to the movement’s sense of community and belonging.
“I am responsible,” he told NRC. “But I am in no way the person I was then.”
Tata Steel’s board was unmoved. In its official statement, the company said it “regrets that not all information which was important for making a well-considered decision regarding his appointment was provided during the discussions in the recruitment process.”
His contract was terminated with immediate effect.
An already controversial hire
Pols’ appointment at Tata Steel had been controversial from the start.
When his move was announced, Milieudefensie, which lists Tata Steel as one of 28 major polluters it campaigns against, expressed deep disappointment. The group’s supervisory board described it as “surprising” and said they were “deeply disappointed” by the decision.
Tata Steel IJmuiden is one of the Netherlands’ most significant industrial polluters, with a long history of health complaints from residents in the surrounding IJmond region. The company is currently working through a major green steel transition plan backed by government funding.
The discovery of Pols’ far-right past was made by researcher and historian Anne-Lot Hoek while working on a book about apartheid-era South Africa and Namibia’s colonial history.
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