S.Africa: AfriForum sticks to its guns on Shoot the Boer being hate speech – My Comments
[This is from Malema's lot as well as the ANC ruling party. This is from earlier this year. I agree, this kind of talk must not be tolerated. Malema is intent on killing Whites. These Blacks should be charged with Hate Speech. If a White had to do what they do, the White person would be arrested instantly, charged with hate speech and probably end up in jail. No White person could get away with what they get away with. Jan]
AfriForum insists that the singing of anti-apartheid song “Shoot the Boer” by the EFF and the ANC was directly linked with an increase in farm attacks even though it could not indicate the ratio of farm murders and attacks compared to other similar criminal acts throughout the country.
The legal battle resumed in the Equality Court in Johannesburg on Tuesday, where AfriForum wants the respondents — the EFF, its leader Julius Malema and MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi — charged with hate speech, forced to apologise and to pay damages.
AfriForum also want Malema to be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority for prosecution for contempt of court as it insists he violated the 2010 ruling by the same court which found the singing of the song to constitute hate speech.
The EFF and the ANC have over the years insisted that the “Shoot the Boer” song was a liberation song and that it was wrong to construe its meaning as though it was literally referring to Afrikaners or farmers or inciting that they be literally attacked.
AfriForum’s Ernst Roets, who is on the stand for the second day, however, distanced himself from the characterisation of the song as a Struggle song, saying his evidence was only limited to its use since the last days of apartheid and how it had been declared hate speech by the courts and the SA Human Rights Commission .
“I would prefer not to comment on the extent to which this song is or isn’t a Struggle song. But I can comment on the history of this song post 1990,” he said.
He told the court that former ANC Youth League president Peter Mokaba had previously sang the song in 1993 and that this was followed by an increase in farm murders.
He said the organisation had since conducted studies which found that “high-profile incidents of hate speech” partly caused the attacks.
“Upon analysing five high-profile incidents of hate speech directed at white farmers, we have discovered an average increase of 74.8% in farm murders in the months that followed these incidents,” Roets said.
The EFF has rejected the case by AfriForum and accused Roets of trying to promote his controversial book on farm murders, which he is using as part of his testimony.
While Malema was expected to take the stand, his lawyer Adv Mfesane Ka-Siboto said he would now only come to court on Monday as he would be Cape Town for the rest of the week, after it transpired that Roets’s evidence in chief would take longer.
The hearing continues.