"Shoot The Boer" Controversy
In March 2010, at a rally on a university campus, the former president of the African National Congress Youth League Julius Malema sang the lyrics "shoot the boer" (Dubul' ibhunu – "Boer" is the Afrikaans word for "farmer", but is also used by Afrikaners as a self-identifying term of their ethnicity. His singing was compared to similar chants by deceased Youth League leader Peter Mokaba in the early 1990s, "kill the boer",. which had previously been defined as hate speech by the South African Human Rights Commission. Recently, Julius Malema was summoned for the criminal offence of hate speech by Solidarity and Afriforum in the Southern Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg to explain his actions. On 16 May 2011 the judge in the case ruled that the use of the phrase was incitement to genocide. In 2011 Afriforum youth and the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU SA) brought an application forward against ANC youth league leader Julius Malema at the equality court over his singing of the song. Afriforum argued that "Boer" referred either to Afrikaners or farmers and that Malema was a public and influential leader, openly singing lyrics that incited violence towards an ethnic group, which constituted hate speech. TAU said, that it was not about the intent but how the message was perceived by the targeted group or the group that felt targeted. ANC lawyers argued that the contentious lyrics were taken completely out of context and that the word "ibhunu" or even "boer" did not refer to Afrikaners, but to the system of apartheid. Expert witnesses stated that the chant, the words, could spur to violence, especially marginalised people. On 12 September 2011, Judge Lamont ruled that the singing of the words shoot the boer amounted to hate speech. He also declared the singing of the song in any capacity to be illegal stating that he finds no possible justifications for singing the song. The ANC has announced that they will appeal the ruling.
On 8 January 2012, after giving a speech at the ANC Centennial 2012 celebrations in Bloemfontein, South Africa, president Jacob Zuma sang the same "shoot the Boer" that had been the subject of Julius Malema's hate speech conviction.
Read more about this topic: South African Farm Attacks
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