'Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer': Igwijo is a Soundtrack of Resistance, Not a Declaration of War

IOL News

26-05-2025

Then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki (R) hands over the African National Congress (ANC) submission to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), in Cape Town May 12, 1997. Appearing before the TRC, Mbeki responded with characteristic intellectual clarity and cultural precision when asked to account for Peter Mokaba's singing of 'Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer', says the writer.
Zamikhaya Maseti
The initial diplomatic choreography that unfolded in Oval Office meeting between President Cyril Ramaphosa and President Donald J. Trump are characteristics of most bilateral meetings. But just when the South African delegation was easing into the rhythm of State Diplomacy, the unexpected happened: President Trump's ghost of a liberation song "Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer" was abruptly summoned into the room, weaponised with precision and intent.
This was no accidental provocation. It was a calculated ambush.
President Ramaphosa, a man known for his composed demeanour and political agility, was visibly rattled. The spectacle was painful to witness, he appeared caught in a suffocating grip, struggling for breath and composure. His attempt to rationalize the historical and revolutionary context of the chant came across as faltering, ill-prepared, and agonisingly defensive. At that moment, it was not only the President that was outflanked, it was the entire South African statecraft machinery that stood exposed, vulnerable, and intellectually disarmed.
Let us not mince words: this Oval Office experience revealed two fundamental structural deficiencies in the South African state.
First, and most glaring, is the strategic and operational weakness of our foreign intelligence architecture. It is self-evident that President Ramaphosa was not thoroughly briefed on the psychological terrain he was entering. A basic PESTEL analysis (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal) should have informed a scenario-based briefing, enabling the President to anticipate Trump's ideological landmines.
That this was not done is either a betrayal of competence or an indictment on the calibre of our diplomatic corps and foreign intelligence operatives. The silence of our foreign mission in Washington, and their failure to pick up the murmurs from Elon Musk's media operatives and Trump's inner propaganda circle, speaks to a broader decay of state capacity in the field of geopolitical reconnaissance.
And yes, we must name Elon Musk here, not as an incidental observer, but as a central strategist in this narrative. The tech mogul, whose complicated relationship with South Africa is marinated in grievance and nostalgia, appears to have played the role of provocateur-in-chief. The material used in that Oval Office confrontation was curated with deliberate malice and nationalist framing. This could have been predicted and mitigated if only we had eyes on the ground and minds in the sky.
Second, and perhaps more disturbing, is the intellectual erosion within the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC), particularly those serving in the Executive. As President Ramaphosa floundered in his attempt to contextualise a chant that emerged from the bowels of the People's War, no member of his delegation rose in ideological defence.
None could summon the analytical courage to explain that the South African liberation project was founded on four interrelated and indispensable pillars: Mass Mobilisation, Armed Struggle, Underground Work, and International Solidarity. It is within this matrix that the revolutionary chants found their meaning, not as calls to racial violence, but as expressions of collective defiance against a system of dehumanisation and land dispossession.
No one could articulate this, not even as a diplomatic counter-narrative a sobering indication of how far the ANC has drifted from its historical and ideological moorings. The Party of Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, and Chris Hani appears to be losing the capacity to defend its historical lexicon. The younger cadres, both in Parliament and Cabinet, are unfamiliar with the very discourse that once galvanised a nation under siege. Their silence, when it mattered most, is not merely tactical; it is symptomatic of historical amnesia and ideological dereliction.
President Ramaphosa tried, valiantly, to explain that the views and performances of fringe political actors. Authoritarian populists and sloganeering demagogues do not reflect official state policy. But in the absence of a coherent ideological defence and a strategic diplomatic posture, the explanation rang hollow. It lacked the intellectual depth and historical weight required in such a moment.
The lesson is brutal but necessary: in the age of hyper-politicised diplomacy and weaponised memory, no leader should enter the global arena unarmed with ideology. The struggle continues not only on the streets of our townships but in the minds of our leaders and the intelligence capacity of our diplomats.
As the exchange unfolded, I could not help but think back, nearly three decades ago, to a moment when this same question confronted another titan of the African National Congress (ANC): Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki, then Deputy President of the ANC and the Republic of South Africa. Appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mbeki responded with characteristic intellectual clarity and cultural precision when asked to account for Peter Mokaba's singing of the very same chant. He said:
'We need to talk about African tradition. There is no such policy...this was not a statement. It's not a statement of any kind and wouldn't be read by any of these African youth as a statement. In Xhosa, this particular form of art is called igwijo, and igwijo is not a statement. It's not a political statement, it's a chant. You use it... Dumisa... for instance, amakhwenkwe when they are going over long distances, they would be doing this thing... It's not a statement. You see, part of the problem with this is that somebody who comes from outside of that African culture interpreted it... and indeed when you then write there Peter Mokaba said: 'Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer,' he didn't in the sense of a statement which represents policy, and it would not have been taken as a statement that represents policy. So, there is no ANC policy which says, 'Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer' and all that, but there would be amagwijo of all sorts.
You have a Zulu song, not quite bigwigs, but it's a traditional song: 'Ngeke ngiye mina kwa Zulu kwafel' uMa Wam.' It's not a statement. It is not a statement I am making that I will never visit Zululand. It's a song. There are different chants, and they would be saying different things about the struggle, and you could translate them. This particular one was picked out, as I say, and interpreted from outside of this African culture and presented as a political statement. It never was...'
This is what intellectual preparation looks like. If only someone in President Ramaphosa's delegation had possessed even a modicum of the ideological dexterity and cultural literacy with which Mbeki dismantled the TRC's line of questioning, the outcome in that Oval Office might have been different. Trump would have received not just a briefing, but a primer on the South African revolution, its poetic traditions, and its lexicon of resistance.
Instead, the silence of the delegation was deafening.
What the world witnessed was not simply a diplomatic slip but the collapse of ideological continuity between generations of ANC leadership. That no one in Ramaphosa's Cabinet could rise to the occasion and defend the revolutionary heritage of chants, bigwigs, and struggle songs as non-policy artefacts of mass mobilisation is an indictment on the intellectual and historical anaemia in the upper echelons of the State. These chants were never Parliamentary resolutions; they were never policy manifestos. They were the soundtrack of resistance, rising from the mines, the townships, the bush camps of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and the marches of our Mothers.
More crucially, the Oval Office debacle exposed the strategic infirmity of South Africa's foreign intelligence apparatus. That President Ramaphosa walked into that lion's den without the benefit of a thorough pre-briefing, one grounded in scenario planning, geopolitical intelligence, and digital surveillance, is a lapse of statecraft. The PESTEL lens should have been employed. A simple foresight exercise, coupled with on-the-ground reconnaissance in Washington and Silicon Valley, would have revealed that the chant had been resurfacing in conservative echo chambers and Musk's algorithmic battlefield for weeks. That Elon Musk had weaponised it, and that Trump would deploy it, was predictable, was inevitable.
We must speak frankly: the South African state is haemorrhaging strategic Intelligence capacity, and our foreign missions are asleep at the wheel. That is the first failure.
The second, as I have laboured to demonstrate, is the ideological dislocation between ANC cadres and their revolutionary tradition. We cannot afford a generation of leaders who are afraid to speak the truth of their history, or worse, who have forgotten it.
The road ahead is perilous. In a world where memory is manipulated and history is a battlefield, we must return to our roots not to retreat, but to defend and reinterpret them with intellectual rigour. The ANC must rebuild its ideological schoolhouses. Our diplomats must be trained not only in protocol but in the politics of meaning. And our President must never again enter imperial rooms unarmed with the poetry of our liberation.
Let it be known: igwijo is not a declaration of war, it is a chant of remembrance. But if we do not explain it, others will define it. And in doing so, they will define us.
Let this be a wake-up call. Our revolution is being misrepresented, and we are being outsmarted not because the enemy is smarter, but because we have forgotten who we are and where we come from.
* Zamikhaya Maseti is a Political Economy Analyst with a Magister Philosophiae (M. PHIL) in South African Politics and Political Economy from the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), now known as the Nelson Mandela University (NMU).
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.