Johannesburg - South Africa's ruling African National Congress on Friday again refused to condemn its leaders for resurrecting historical songs that glorify violence against whites, after the controversial leader of the party's Youth League, Julius Malema, sang "shoot the Boers" at a rally this week. The phrase "Dubula iBhunu" (Shoot the Boers in isiZulu) is the refrain of an anti-apartheid song called Ayesaba amagwalasang (They are afraid).
The 29-year-old enfant terrible of South African politics, whose slanderous remarks and sometimes violent invective regularly make headlines, led a group of students in the song during a rally at the University of
Johannesburg on Tuesday.
Boer is a term for an Afrikaner farmer, often used derogatorily. The Afrikaner community, which is descended from Dutch settlers and whose leaders presided over the racist apartheid regime, currently make up 4-5 per cent of South Africa's population of 48.5 million.
"Those songs are part of our history and therefore we are not going to be forced to erase that history," ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told Johannesburg's 702 private radio station defensively.
"People want us to shout him down. Why must we do that?," President Jacob Zuma remarked insouciantly, when asked by Mail & Guardian weekly about Malema's remarks.
The song has drawn comparisons with the infamous "kill the Boer, kill the farmer" chant of deceased former ANC Youth League leader, Peter Mokaba.
Mokaba was criticized for continuing to chant the slogan into the 1990s, while the apartheid government and the ANC were in negotiations on a peaceful transition to democracy. The South African Human Rights Commission later declared the chant to be hate speech.
Afrikaner groups want Ayesaba amagwalasang to be also ruled out of order.
"The feeble defence that it is part of a 'struggle' song does not excuse the inflammatory and inciting pronouncements," a spokesman for the Afrikanerbond, a group that promotes the interest of Afrikaans speakers, said.
The Afrikanerbond, which has laid a complaint against Malema at the Human Rights Commission, draws a link between the song and the large number of attacks on farms which have taken place since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s.
"I believe it's (the songs) are a factor," Frans Cronje, deputy chief executive of the South African Institute for Race Relations agrees.
"I think that people who are already in that position, are already considering it (an attack on a white farmer) ... hearing that their government doesn't quite condemn it pushes them further to it."
Between 1991 and March 2010, there have been 2,538 attacks on mostly white-owned farms, in which 1,396 people have died, according to the Afrikanerbond. Most of the murders occur during armed robberies but some attacks by black community members against white farmers and vice-versa are believed to be racially-motivated.
One Afrikaner political party, the Freedom Front Plus, has brought criminal charges against Malema for allegedly advocating hate.
It's not the first time the populist Malema has been in hot
water for his bellicose rhetoric.
He first made international headlines in 2008 with his declaration that he was ready to "kill for (President Jacob) Zuma," when Zuma faced a trial for corruption. The charges were later dropped.
The latest controversy comes as the youth leader attempts to shore up his
support among grassroots ANC members in the wake of revelations that his company bagged millions of dollars in government tenders.
It is also not the first time an embattled ANC leader has rallied his troops with a call to arms.
During his campaign for ANC president, Zuma resurrected Awuleth' Umshini Wami (Bring me my machine gun) - a liberation song, which became his
trademark song and which he has continued to sing, albeit less frequently, since becoming president.
"In a violent society like ours, it's not the right message from government," says Cronje.
