‘Kill the Boer’ Song Fuels Backlash in South Africa and U.S.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The political rally was winding down when the brash leader of a leftist South African party grabbed the microphone and began to stomp and chant. Thousands of supporters joined in, and when he reached the climax, they pointed their fingers in the air like guns.
“Kill the Boer!” Julius Malema chanted, referring to white farmers. The crowd in a stadium in Johannesburg on Saturday roared back in approval.
A video clip of that moment shot across the internet and was seized upon by some Americans on the far right, who said that it was a call to violence. That notion really took off when Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire who left the country as a teenager, chimed in.
“They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa,” Mr. Musk, who is white,wrote on Monday on Twitter, the platform he now controls.
In recent years, people on the right in South Africaand the United States, including former President Donald J. Trump, have seized on attacks on white farmers to make the false claim that there have been mass killings.
Mr. Malema leads the Economic Freedom Fighters, a party that advocates taking white-owned land to give to Black South Africans. That has made his embrace of the chant all the more disturbing to some whites.
Despite the words, the song should not be taken as a literal call to violence, according to Mr. Malema and veterans and historians of the anti-apartheid struggle. It has been around for decades, one of many battle cries of the anti-apartheid movement that remain a defining feature of the country’s political culture.
The chant was born at a time when Black South Africans were fighting a violent, racist regime, and was made popular in the early 1990s by Peter Mokaba, a former youth leader in the African National Congress. But the A.N.C., the liberation party that has governed South Africa since the beginning of multiracial democracy nearly 30 years ago,distanced itself from the songin 2012 — the same year itexpelled Mr. Malemafor his incendiary statements.
Bongani Ngqulunga, who teaches politics at the University of Johannesburg, recalled struggle songs from the apartheid days in which people proclaimed they were going to march to Pretoria, the capital city, or that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison the next morning. The people singing those songs were not actually planning to march to Pretoria, nor did they really think that Mr. Mandela was about to be released, he said.
Similarly, he said, the phrase “kill the Boer” — the word means farmer in Dutch and Afrikaans — is not meant to promote violence against individual farmers. “It was a call to mobilize against an oppressive system,” Mr. Ngqulunga said.
Nomalanga Mkhize, a historian at Nelson Mandela University, said of the chant: “Young people feel that it rouses them up when they sing it today. I don’t think that they intend it to mean any harm.”
But John Steenhuisen, the white leader of the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s main opposition party, filed charges this week against Mr. Malema at the United Nations Human Rights Council, and claimed, without providing evidence, that “brutal farm murders continue to escalate in the wake of Malema’s demagoguery.”
Analysts say that Mr. Steenhuisen is eager to placate white South Africans, who might be attracted to parties to his right, ahead of elections next year.
Mr. Malema, who thrives on provocation, projected a blasé attitude toward the criticism. “Bring it on small boy,” he wrotein a Tweetto Mr. Steenhuisen.
Asked during a news conference on Wednesday about Mr. Musk’s comment, Mr. Malema responded: “Why must I educate Elon Musk? He looks like an illiterate. The only thing that protects him is his white skin.”
Mr. Malema emphasized a court ruling last year that said he was within his rights to chant “kill the Boer.”
“I will sing this song as and when I feel like,” he said.
Just over a decade ago, a South African judge ruled that the song was hate speech and prohibited Mr. Malema, then the leader of the A.N.C. youth league, from singing it. But after being booted from the party and founding the E.F.F., Mr. Malema sang the song publicly again.
AfriForum, an organization that advocates for the interests of Afrikaners, descendants of South Africa’s white colonizers, took Mr. Malema to court.
Last year, Judge Edwin Molahlehi ruled that AfriForum had “failed to show that the lyrics in the songs could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to harm or incite to harm and propagate hatred.”
“Before democracy, the song was directed at the apartheid regime,” he added, “and more particularly to the dispossession of the land of the majority of the members of the society by the colonial powers.”
Mr. Malema testified during that court proceeding that the lyrics should not be interpreted literally. The song, he told the court, was directed toward the government’s failure to address a disparity in land ownership between Black and white South Africans.
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oh no, some afri-klanners ending up taking dirt naps. bummer. I wonder what's for lunch...
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Doesn't matter. [Deleted] He has wished death on many conservatives or even simply someone that had a different opinion.
Liberalism is a cult religion that needs to go into the annals of history. That ideology has caused too much damage to this country....and the cult followers don't care.
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I love the New York Times. The classic "Republicans Pounce" article gets transferred to South Africa to protect their partisan allies.
Only Progressives could get upset that some people don't think inciting crowds to "Kill The Boer, Kill the Farmer" amidst an ongoing campaign of killing Boers is a good thing. As Rod Dreher said, "only far right people could possibly think that the leader of South Africa’s third largest political party leading a stadium full of militant supporters in a chant calling for murdering white people is, you know, problematic."
Just a day after this rally, a farmer was tortured to death on his property. Whoops!
One can imaging the 19th Century version of the Times attacking Republicans for criticizing Democrats for chanting "Kill the N-word" at a rally in the midst of a lynching campaign.
"Republicans pounce on a song that shouldn't be taken literally!"
The day after the Kill the Boer rally:
Voted you up, Sean. You did good.
There is an important point to this article and they are going to try to run from it. The black South Africans are now in total control of the country and they are proving that they can be just as racist as any other group. You won't hear any response to the murder of farmers in South Africa.
Beyond that is a comment I recall from a black South African, whom I met about 15 years ago. I asked how were things over there. He said "Nothing works right anymore!"
That worked out well for Zimbabwe which went from being the bread basket of Southern Africa to struggling to feed itself.
Of course few Americans know the history of 'The Boer Wars'. Nineteenth Century history of European Colonization in Africa. There is much unsaid in this article. I suggest a quick study some of the 'things' that occurred during those times.
None-the-less, hate never solved anything then and continues to not solve anything now.
Exactly, as the Boer War was between the UK and the Boers.
You missed the point. The Boer Wars were between one Colonial European power against another that desired the ability to plunder Africa to enrich The Empire.
A study of what happened to the native people before the war, during the war and after the war is what fuels people such as Malema.
This is the point that is ignored in this article.
I missed a point that you didn’t articulate.
What would South Africa be like now had the Europeans never arrived?
Who knows?
Had Africa not been colonized, African states, including what is now South Africa would have been in a position to not only utilize their own resources for its development, but Africa would have also been better positioned to incorporate the industrial advancements of Europe. Colonialism robbed Africa of its ability to effectively develop itself. It also robbed it of its culture and governing bodies.
It should also be noted that the colonizers, mainly French, British, German and Belgium murdered millions and used slavery as a tool to plunder the riches of Africa.
King Leopold II of Belgium murdered millions of Africans.
Before colonization, there were many advanced kingdoms/empires in Africa.
Reading the many books/reports/articles on what happened during the Apartheid era in SA gives one an idea of the destructive apparatus that crushed SA.
Yes, colonialism was parade of horrors:
Exactly, who knows. Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonized, maybe South Africa would be doing as well as they are with colonization.
Do you think you can acknowledge the atrocities listed in post # 3 ?
Do you think that you can acknowledge the atrocities of colonization of millions killed in Africa including South Africa by the white colonizers? Also, the atrocities of the RCC which gave the colonizers religious license to comment the atrocities?
Or the atrocities the colonizers committed in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific?
So, you can't!
Today under its new rulers, South Africa is a place of revenge, mayhem and murder.
Currently the government is moving to break up the old white farms to redistribute them.
It is blatant hate & racism.
So you can't either, are you a subscriber of the Bruce Gilley school of thought?
Currently 8% of the population (white) control over 70% of the land. And the hundreds of years of murder, mayhem, and raping the people and country of its natural resources by the colonizers was what, Vic?
Or it's that dish you prefer served cold.
An eye for an eye, eh Kavika?
Those farmers didn't hurt anyone. Stop living in the past!
Yes, thanks for pointing out the article was met by fanatics and calls for violence that led to it being retracted for safety purposes. Nice of the author you cite to admit it should never have been retracted.
Do you have any substantive arguments to link to other than the conclusion that it was wrong?
Perhaps you should acknowledge the past and the millions that died that didn't hurt anyone.
We all know the history of SA. You want to ignore genocide.
As for the dead, they can't be helped now.
The author pointed out that it should not be redacted for a number of reasons but to refute it which he did. He also pointed out that a petition with 15,000 signatures demanded it be retracted and 15 members of the board resigned over it.
by CHARLI CARPENTER
19 September 2017, 1006 EDT
This is a guest post by Sahar Khan , a visiting research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Defense and Foreign Policy Department. Sahar holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine. Follow her at @khansahar1 .
The Third World Quarterly (TWQ), a reputable academic journal in international studies, is currently under fire by academics including Ducks . In its latest issue, it published an article titled “The Case for Colonialism” by Dr. Bruce Gilley of Portland State University. In this article, Gilley calls for a return of colonialism, citing the benefits of a “colonial governance” agenda over the “good governance” agenda, which would involve overtaking state bureaucracies, recolonizing some areas, and creating new colonies “from scratch.” He argues that this new colonialism will be: 1) beneficial because it will be chosen by “the colonized,” and hence, will be legitimate; 2) attractive to Western conservatives because they are financially low-risk, and to liberals, because they will be just; and 3) effective because they will be designed like charter cities, which have proven to be efficient and effective at governance.
At first glance, the article seems like a bad joke. Can someone, a scholar no less, actually make a case for colonialism? And advocate for its return? Also, considering that the TWQ is jointly involved in creating an award named after Edward Said, the founder of postcolonial studies, it is especially surprising that the journal would publish a poor quality article on the subject of colonialism. The response has been swift. Though there are some apologists, social media has exploded with criticism against the author and the journal, even sparking a petition calling for the article’s retraction . Within a day, the petition gathered over 1500 signatures, with more signing on.
The problem is not that the article is offensive (which it is). The problem is that it is empirically and historically inaccurate, misuses existing postcolonial scholarship, and largely ignores interdisciplinary approaches to the study of colonial legacies. There are at least five blatant examples of this. First, in the introduction, Gilley cites Berney Sèbe’s article that analyzes imperial figures in Zambian, Nigerian, and Congolese history, and advocates for replacing the “good governance” agenda with a “colonial agenda.” Sèbe ’s research is essentially about the role of colonial history in the creation of Zambia’s, Nigeria’s, and the Congo’s state narratives where the state is still grappling with the scars of its colonial past. Sèbe notes that the rebirth of colonial leaders as heroes uncovers the profound effect of colonialism on the state’s nation-building narratives. He further concludes that these narratives are moving from the post-colonialism calls of political emancipation toward “a post-racial form of cosmopolitan nation-building,” which attempts to combine anti-colonial sentiments with the modern conceptions of nationhood within African countries that are complex and multi-layered. Gilley conveniently ignores the latter part of Sèbe ’s research, and instead, only focuses on this resurgence of colonial heroes as evidence of the failure of anti-colonial rhetoric. Handpicking arguments that fit into your own theory is bad methodology—and as a professor, Gilley should know better.
Second, Gilley praises Sèbe ’s “cosmopolitan nation-building” as an “explicit rejection of the parochial myth of self-governing capacity that drove most postcolonial countries into the ground” (p.8). Gilley has not only misused Sèbe ’s term but clearly has also misunderstood it. Sèbe ’s use of “cosmopolitan” is descriptive. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, cosmopolitan means “having worldwide rather than limited or provincial scope.” It does not, as Gilley concludes, reject the “myth” around postcolonial states governing capacity. There is ample historical evidence on how almost all postcolonial states inherited bureaucracies that they could not immediately manage. The lack of management was not because they did not know how to govern but was due to a myriad of factors that involved dealing with scarce resources, an influx of refugees, internal ideological divisions, and external threats to territory, as examined by Ayesha Jalal and Bertrand Badie . Gilley’s characterization of Sèbe ’s “cosmopolitan nation-building,” therefore, is misleading and blatantly ignores postcolonial scholarship.
Third, Gilley labels decolonization as “sudden,” which again, is empirically inaccurate. For example, the decolonization of the Indian sub-continent that resulted in the independence of Pakistan and India in 1947 can be dated to the 1840s, when calls for independence from the British began. Likewise, the Indonesian independence movement from the Dutch began in 1908—and is called the “Year of National Awakening”—resulting in independence in 1945. Similarly, Algerian calls for independence from French rule date back to World War I. After a bloody war of independence, Algeria was decolonized in 1962. Morocco was also colonized by France and Spain and gained independence in 1956. There are, therefore, numerous examples of states that struggled for independence for decades. This may be news to Gilley but decades of emancipatory struggles is not “sudden.”
Fourth, Gilley describes anti-colonial literature’s emphasis on the harmful effects of colonization as biased, inadequate, and not thorough enough. However, he ignores how disproportionate the benefits of colonialism were toward colonized populations. It is true that during their colonial rule, the British, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch built railways, expanded education systems, improved healthcare, created systems of taxation, and outlined basic governance infrastructure. And so Gilley states that a colonial governance agenda “resurrects the universalism of the liberal peace and with it a shared standard of what a well-governed country looks like” (p. 8). He uses Alexander De Juan and Jan Henryk Pierskalla’s article to make this point against anti-colonial critiques. De Juan and Pierskalla’s article, however, does not advance a pro-colonial agenda. Instead, it is a literature review showcasing four areas for growth within interdisciplinary postcolonial scholarship that include internal dynamics of colonial rule, disaggregating variables and units of analyses, and investigating contexts that shaped the consequences of colonial rule. Furthermore, advancements under colonial rule were not for everyone; not only did these measures favor elites and pro-colonizer groups but also created divisions along ethnic, religious, and linguistic lines within indigenous populations that continue to exist today. The colonial method of governance, therefore, was to oppress, violate, and divide resources and populations—and is thoroughly documented and researched within political science, sociology, anthropology, and history. For example, the British exploited differences between the Hindu and Muslim communities in the sub-continent, creating deep resentments and divisions that persist today due to the 1947 Partition. Similarly, differences between the Hutus and Tutsis that led to the Rwandan genocide were created and exploited by Belgian colonizers. Historians and anthropologists alike have argued that these differences were economic, not ethnic. In fact, Hutus and Tutsis are indistinguishable . Since the genocide, Rwanda has become a “beacon of hope,” and exemplifies how reconciliation can eliminate differences imposed by colonialism.
And fifth, Gilley attributes the abolition of slave-trading to colonialism, which in addition to being ridiculous, is factually incorrect. The Portuguese began slavery in the 1500s as they explored West Africa while the British brought the first installment of African slaves to Virginia in 1619. Colonizers, therefore, created the slave trade. Systematic decolonization and subsequent wars of independence eventually ended the slave trade.
Academia has a duty to inform with integrity, honesty, and evidence. If scholars and journals alike are not held to this standard, it provides an opening for falsehoods and misinformation to take hold, shape perceptions, and dictate policies. We are living in a critical political climate, especially in the United States, where President Trump’s apparent sympathy for radical right-wing groups is troubling. This kind of scholarship is dangerous not just because it legitimizes the whitewashing of academic literature but also stands to undermine U.S. foreign policy as it taints important scholarship on concepts related to neocolonialism. Aside from being wrong on the facts, articles like these merely perpetuate dubious justifications for U.S. military interventionism and long-term nation-building projects in distant lands with populations that resent foreign occupation. We should expect more from scholarly journals.
It's history Kavika. It does not justify what many black South Africans are doing today!
It's obvious that your knowledge of the history of SA and Africa, in general, is lacking. It seems that you are more than content with ignoring the genocide that took place for centuries including the 20th century.
Of course, the victims of colonial genocide cannot be helped now but acknowing that it happened and by who is certainly something people with any moral code can do.
So, is your opinion history justifies the colonization and genocide.
Just the opposite. Nothing justifies racism, slavery, colonization or any revenge actions because of it.
I wonder if you can agree with that?
You know you learn from centuries of conditioning, and the brutality that was shown to the South Africans was quite a lesson.
Does that justify the random murder of white farmers or taking away their farms?
They are showing the same treatment they were given. I don't agree with it, but I can understand where it is coming from.
I'm glad to hear that you don't agree with it. I don't give them any slack for anything that happened to their ancestors. An entire nation was turned over to them and many of them turned out to be theives & murderers. Other people faced discrimination and didn't become animals. You didn't see the Jews commit genocide against the Germans, did you?
The people who murdered the farmer were born this century. They've never spent a day under Apartheid, nor have the majority of black south Africans. Only about 15% of black south Africans were even adults when apartheid existed.
I don't know if you've ever read any of Barbara Tuchman's works or not. I find her to be a great historical researcher and an exceptional writer.
Why try to justify or condemn historical events against present-day standards? I think it is more important to understand both the historical event and the context and backdrop in which it occurred.
The other approach encourages a biassed view of the events and the figures participating in them instead of judging the past on its own terms.
Guns of August is an outstanding book.
That is the way it needs to be taught!
The Mfecane genocide that took place in South Africa had nothing to do with colonization. If anything, the Boers ended it by defeating the Matabele.
First of all define many. Some did, but the same could be said about the whites that ruled over them. And you just called who animals?
Well, first of all, the Germans did a great job of wiping out half the Jewish population, so retribution was a tad hard. That being said, there were factions of Jews who wanted to poison the water in Germany, and there was a group who did have Nazi hit squads. Payback is a reality.
. The Portuguese began slavery in the 1500s as they explored West Africa
Lol. Is this comedy?
Just out of curiosity, how did the Boers, white people, end up on the lower tip of the continent of Africa? Did they get lost?
Start here:
“Kill the Boer!” Julius Malema chanted, referring to white farmers. The crowd in a stadium in Johannesburg on Saturday roared back in approval.
And here:
Supporters of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a leftist political party, protesting near the court.
And here:
And you just called who animals?
All of the above
Well, first of all, the Germans did a great job of wiping out half the Jewish population, so retribution was a tad hard. That being said, there were factions of Jews who wanted to poison the water in Germany, and there was a group who did have Nazi hit squads. Payback is a reality.
But the Jews never acted like those who persecuted them. And btw those Jews suffered from it directly. It wasn't their long departed ancestors. You see Perrie, culture has a lot to do with it. Others did kill German people after the war was over, but not Jews. (many don't know that)
This is a matter of choice and a murderer is a murderer and racism comes in all colors.
How did tribes that started out in central africa end up in south africa after the boers arrived? Is some migration acceptable, but others a crime?
Are you ignorant of that part of documented history? Perhaps this will refresh your memory.
Pope Nicolas V and the Portuguese Slave Trade
https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/pope_nicolas_v_and_the_portugu#:~:text=This%20chronicle%20documents%20the%20early,large%2Dscale%20slave%20trafficking%20enterprise.
I think that it started out as a food resupply stop for ships transiting the Europe - Asia trade route.
The Portuguese did not begin slavery in Africa.
The Portuguese did began their history of African slavery in the 15th century in West Africa.
Slavery preexisted the Portuguese in Africa.
I think it is more important to understand both the historical event and the context and backdrop in which it occurred.
I read a good essay on that this morning.
Though I think there's as much of a tendency today to either simply categorize groups of people as "evil" or infantilize them as perfect victims. The messiness of history is not fashionable.
It is talking about the Portuguese history of slavery in West Africa...
It's talking about blaming colonialism for slavery in Africa, despite slavery preexisting colonialism.
I think that the oldest evidence of African slavery was in Egypt starting around 1500 BC.
The Europeans exploited place like Africa, period. They didnt just go there to get along with the natives, they went there to take over land other people were already living on.
I will be truly impressed if anyone from any side knows it. Even the 'vaunted' historians mentioned have needed to rely on the verbal 'history' of the 'losers' and the 'veracity' of the pens of the victors.
We need remember that Cecil Rhodes envisioned an Africa controlled by the B.E. from Cape Horn to Cairo and he did not give a damn about how that was to be achieved.
No, it's not.
Amazingly, Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, Russ Fiengold, George Stephanopoulos, Naomi Wolfe, Susan Rice, Rachel Maddow, Pete Buttiegieg, and others weren’t embarrassed to accept a scholarship from this racist’s foundation.
Yes, they all should give back all the “privilege” they received from having that.
All of it …….
Maybe that is because the Foundation has recognized the failings of its founder and now seeks to address and redress them.
Yes, in much of human history, that is what conquerors did. Were the first human inhabitants of the South African region, killed or displaced by the two Bantu expansions into the area?
So if the US becomes completely overrun by hispanics from outside our territory and becomes a 90% hispanic controlled country, it will be ok BECAUSE IT HAPPENED ?
Are you trying to make a hypothetical current event equivalent with something that started almost 500 years ago?
You and Sean want to argue that because the Europeans , or some other group, took over land already occupied it is ok because thats just the way it is.
So if migration from the south eventually produces a hispanic dominated USA it will be justified, right? Because they will have succeeded in doing it.
To put it another way, if it was acceptable for Europeans to take South Africa then it is acceptable for hispanics to take the USA. You agree, right?
Non sequitur
Migration and colonization are not even remotely the same thing.
I don';t look to history to justify or condemn. I expect the research to tell what happend and provide the context of place and time. If we are defeated by a Hispanic invasion tomorrow, I would expect future historians to do the same.
Acceptable? By whom and when?
What difference will right or wrong make? Do you think believing it's "wrong" or "unfair" would stop it from happening, if circumstances allow it?
Don't stop believin'
Hold on to that feelin'
Or they absorbed each other much as the Chinese and Mongols did ...
The Mongols perhaps killed about 11% of the world's population during or immediately after the Mongol invasions, around 37.75–60 million people in Eurasia.
The Chinese slaughters millions as well but many of them were Chinese.
Numbers are all over the place and history loves a villain.
The Mongol invasion of Asia in the 1200s took enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to offset a year's worth of the world's gasoline demand today, according to a new study.
In China success in “great leaps forward” are measured in killing your own people.
20-60 million in the late 50’s, early 60’s. But no problem.
They have plenty ….
Perhaps to many here, the Chinese example doesn't count in identity politics since they killed each other.
Genghis Khan was the first greenie?
Who knew?
We need to add Steppe People's history to a deficient K -12 system.