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Debate opens door for farmers to stop ‘Kill the Boer' song

Debate opens door for farmers to stop ‘Kill the Boer' song

The Citizen23-05-2025

The singing of 'Kill the Boer' and farm murders are now on the world stage, say Afrikaner lobbyists, who warn the ANC government to stop denialism and rebuild trust.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald Trump will put a stop to the singing of Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer.
Ramaphosa and his ANC-led government now face a serious choice, said AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel.
'They can either continue to deny SA's pressing problems – which will have negative implications for the country – or they can try to lead the country out of this crisis by, among other things, acknowledging and helping to resolve the human rights violations to which Afrikaners and other minorities are subjected.'
'Where to now'
Southern African Agri Initiative (Saai) director Theo de Jager said the question shouldn't be who won the debate but, rather, what now and where to now?
'What was clear from the debate was no matter what the Human Rights Commission of South Africa says about it, no matter what the judges in the Constitutional Court say about it, for the rest of the world and, especially for the West, it was not okay to sing Kill the Boer. It is not okay for our government to overlook it. There should be consequences,' he said.
ALSO READ: AfriForum's bid to have 'Kill the boer' declared hate speech fails at ConCourt
Taking the fight to global platforms
'The doors of justice have been closed to our case against singing this song, but we've learned from this debate that the opportunity is still there to take it to the international platforms.
'We will stop the singing, whether it is in United Nations or the International Court of Justice. We can stop this thing on an international level, because the world now has its attention on this issue,' he said.
De Jager said there was no use in saying farm murders were only a small portion of the murders in SA, or that more women, children and gangsters were murdered annually.
'The fact is the farmers are less than 0.1% of the population and if you look at the proportionality of it and the number of farm murders per thousand farmers, it is by far the highest,' he said.
Threat to 'survival of Afrikaans'
Kriel said the introduction of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act and the Expropriation Act, as well as the application of a range of racially based regulations, contribute to the alienation of Afrikaners and other minority communities in the country.
'The ANC-led government's act of aggression against Afrikaans people by threatening the survival of Afrikaans schools and, consequently, that of Afrikaans cultural communities has caused a serious breach of trust.
'This breach of trust has been exacerbated by the publication of draconian racial regulations that enforce strict racial quotas in the workplace and economy, the denial of human rights violations, as seen in farm murders, and legislation that allows for expropriation without compensation,' he said.
Kriel warned that the persistent attempts by ANC leaders and their allies to falsely dismiss concerns about the country's problems as the result of misinformation will fail.
NOW READ: Will Trump go after Malema and Zuma? IRR says 'Kill the Boer' chant created problems for SA

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The Unintended Consequences of US Refugee Policy for South African Minorities
The Unintended Consequences of US Refugee Policy for South African Minorities

IOL News

time2 hours ago

  • IOL News

The Unintended Consequences of US Refugee Policy for South African Minorities

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South African identity has been deeply shaped by colonial conquest, apartheid-era racial division, and selective post-apartheid nation-building. Far from a cohesive category, 'South African' is an ongoing site of contestation, haunted by economic inequality, cultural marginalisation, and incomplete reconciliation. Under apartheid, nationality was fractured across pseudo-ethnic 'homelands.' Today, the uncritically adopted 'Rainbow Nation' rhetoric fails to conceal the persistence of racial and spatial disparities. For many, especially KhoeSan and Coloured South Africans, national identity remains fractured, imposed, and weaponised against their claims to full inclusion and recognition. Afrikaner identity - An exclusionary social construct The term 'Afrikaner' has always been a politically fluid concept. It was only in the 20th century, under apartheid, that it solidified as a synonym for white Afrikaans speakers. 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Premature to claim White House encounter as a South African slam dunk
Premature to claim White House encounter as a South African slam dunk

The Citizen

time5 hours ago

  • The Citizen

Premature to claim White House encounter as a South African slam dunk

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Same same — how State Capture has become SA's greatest export
Same same — how State Capture has become SA's greatest export

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Same same — how State Capture has become SA's greatest export

As Trump wipes away American history and redoubles down on thought crimes, he'd be horrified to know that the ANC has done it better, which is to say worse. Of all the ANC's masterstrokes — and believe it or not, there have been a few — the capture (and subsequent erasure) of history is perhaps its most successful. Without a past, there is no future — just an eternal now, a limbo that represents political stasis. And as dynamic as South Africa may seem if you have your nose jammed in the news, this is indeed a country of stasis, a country where new ideas and genuine transformation die before they are born. Because the ANC has captured history — it is, after all, the 'liberation party', and that's all there is to know — there is no point in revising history, because it's meant to be forgotten. Take the Zondo Commission. Remember that billion-rand boondoggle? Four volumes stuffed with the nightmare legacy of Zuma era corruption, and the results? Not much. The complaints are simple: all of that taxpayer money blown, and not a single meaningful prosecution. But that is to miss the point. As the political commentator and playwright Richard Calland has noted, 'State Capture was something that was really significant. And yet there was a real danger that we moved on too fast from it, and the lessons were not learned, were not digested. And then all the work that was done to defend democracy was kind of wasted. And it was a huge effort to protect the institutions and the rule of law. And I think, although full accountability hasn't happened yet, that it was a significant effort to defend public democracy from private State Capture.' And yet, the Zondo Commission Report should be required reading — the first thing placed in the hands of a kid hitting Grade Zero, in picture-book form. This, after all, is the story of how the world is hijacked. It's an epic, a fairytale, a parable. It's also universally applicable, at least as far as democracies are concerned. The Zondo Commission tells a linear story: how a state is captured, and corruption formalised, by a norm-breaking executive and its private sector enablers. President Jacob Zuma, who was manifestly and obviously a thief, became a viable candidate to replace the establishment figure Thabo Mbeki because he wasn't Thabo Mbeki. His shortcomings were overlooked because it was time for change. The change he offered — a populist spin on African nationalism — was the only thing that would keep the ANC, and therefore the country, from imploding. Or so we were told. In educational and intellectual terms, Zuma was not a Harvard University business school graduate. But he was at least as unethical and rapacious as one. A spy by (forced) vocation, he employed his louche paranoia as a tool against his enemies. He effortlessly subverted the State Security Agency, using it as a money funnel and a battering ram to enrich his cronies and undermine his enemies. His benefactors were brought into the fold to act as middlemen in the flow of funds from the state to state-owned enterprises and their private sector contractees. Then, Zuma went for the National Prosecuting Authority, and followed that up with attacks on other law enforcement agencies — a very simple procedure, given that the executive has the final say over who runs these institutions. He made foolish choices to head the Public Protector's office and the Constitutional Court, but they were his choices to make. By doing this, he signalled that it was open season for corruption, and that shame no longer had a role to play in moderating political behaviour in South Africa. There are other forebears of the 21st-century style of kleptocratic state vandalism. They include Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and, of course, the OG, Vladimir Putin in Russia. But no other country has 4,000 pages of testimony breaking down exactly how the system works. In this, the Zondo Commission Report is perhaps the most important piece of political literature written in the past 25 years. And outside of Ferial Haffajee, how many South Africans, let alone foreign political observers or analysts, have read the whole thing? From a certain perspective, Zondo is a blueprint for how an empowered and unembarrassable executive performs a coup on his or her own country. There are clues in Zondo for how the 21st century has gone so horribly wrong, and hints at how to fix it. *** If liberal Americans knew what they were doing — and they don't — they'd see South Africa as a bellwether, as a warning. This isn't a Zuma equals Trump comparative thing — this goes far beyond individual personalities. Instead, they'd understand how corruption becomes entrenched — how it underpins, and then entirely supplants, ideology. As in South Africa, in the United States, special interests long ago hijacked anything resembling a functioning democracy. Here, the Guptas were avatars for private parasites latching on to the state and leeching it dry. In the US, corruption was driven through the Supreme Court, which has proved almost gleefully amenable. The biggest moment was the Citizens United ruling in 2008, which effectively allowed unlimited corporate spending in election campaigns. From there, it's been relatively smooth sailing. In recent years, while much of the focus was on the repeal of Roe v Wade and the end of female bodily autonomy, Trump's Supreme Court has done two things. First, it's allowed the executive almost monarchical power. And second, it's made bribery — or, rather, 'gratuities' — legal. You don't have to be a genius to see how this leads to a culture of extreme corruption, and it has. The end of Joe Biden's disastrous term led to a slew of pre-pardons of family members, which slithered into Trump 2 and the Zuma-like strip-down of the state. Congress, ostensibly a lawmaking body, stares on gape-mouthed as Trump rewrites the American order in the Oval Office. The lower courts have held up what might be considered the rule of law, but at this point it's largely vestigial. Trump is so empowered that he's now very literally rewarding corruption. Take the case of Paul Walczak, a medical executive and tax cheat who made an application for a full pardon, which Trump ignored. Until Walczak's mother showed up at a million-dollar-a-plate fundraising dinner, where she hobnobbed with the Republican glitterati and scored her son a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's pay to play, and there's no longer anything ambiguous about it. *** Zuma's genius, as with Trump and his minions, is to make graft ideological. The infamous Bell Pottinger misinformation campaign, which reintroduced White Monopoly Capital into the South African parlance, situated corruption and anti-constitutionalism as a transformation project — as a means to empower the previously unempowered. In essence, this was a 'screw the elite' project, which conveniently ignored the facts of power distribution in South Africa, while exploiting the very real economic disparities. Likewise, the Trump ideology comes down to little more than Fuck The Libs. This is a deplorable uprising, the upending of snooty Harvard/Yale/Columbia shitlibs (which again ignores the specifics of who is currently in power in the US). This is emotion as ideology, a vacuous project of rage-baiting driven by the neo-Bell Pottingers on the likes of Elon Musk's X. 'So loud and quiet at once, ideology becomes a substitute for mood,' wrote the novelist Joshua Cohen. And the mood in the US is dark and rebarbative. The capture of the state by special interests — by the billionaire class and the corporations who will exclusively benefit from the revolution under way — is misinterpreted as fascism. But this is silly. The performance of authoritarianism is secondary to the flood-the-zone-with-sewage approach to governance, which hides the formalisation of corruption. No one bothered to call Zuma a fascist — it simply didn't matter. He worked for his family and his friends and benefactors, and no one else. It was a simpler time. It should hopefully be obvious that rebuilding a functioning state in the wake of State Capture is nearly impossible. The centralisation of corruption under Big Men like Zuma (and Trump) inevitably gives way to a violent contestation when they leave office. This fragmentation is lethal and destabilising, and it breeds nostalgia for the good old days of the God King. Which is where South Africa finds itself now. As Trump wipes away American history and redoubles down on thought crimes, he'd be horrified to know that the ANC has done it better, which is to say worse. The rest of the world should take note: it's not fun digging out from under ideology-as-mood. Very little is left to build with. But it always pays to remember that State Capture is an elite project, prosecuted from the top, that benefits the wealthy and powerful. The rest of us are just suckers and cannon fodder. DM

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