The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has welcomed the Constitutional Court’s decision to dismiss lobby group AfriForum’s leave to appeal the Supreme Court of Appeal’s decision which ruled that the ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer’ chant does not constitute hate speech.
In 2022, the Equality Court sitting at the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg ruled against AfriForum which sought to categorise the song as hate speech that incites violence.
The court said AfriForum failed to show that the lyrics of the song contravene the Equality Act or demonstrate a clear intention to harm or incitement. It further ruled that declaring the ‘Kill the Boer’ song as hate speech, would curtail freedom of expression. AfriForum was also ordered to pay the EFF’s legal costs. The lobby group has since approached the Supreme Court of Appeal and recently the Constitutional Court which has also ruled in favour of the EFF.
CONSTITUTIONAL COURT UPHOLDS PREVIOUS RULINGS ON ‘KILL THE BOER’ CHANT
Following the ruling, the EFF said the highest court in the land has confirmed what they have said all along: this case was a frivolous and cynical attempt to weaponise the legal system to distort history and
silence Black resistance.
The party said AfriForum, has repeatedly pushed the false narrative of white victimhood in a country where Black people continue to suffer the legacy of land dispossession, economic exclusion, and systemic
oppression at the hands of white minority rule.
“Their efforts to criminalise a liberation song, one deeply rooted in the fight against the brutal regime that oppressed Black people for decades, are part of their broader project to rewrite history, erase their own crimes, and paint themselves as victims,” the party said.
‘BLACKS HAVE NEVER VICTMISED WHITE PEOPLE’
The ruling comes amid claims from US President Donald Trump that the South African government is using the recently signed Expropriation Act to seize land and farms belonging to white people and that government is “doing bad things” to Afrikaner farmers.
In addition, tech-billionaire Elon Musk has also fuelled the ‘white genocide’ myth on social media by posting clips of Malema singing the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant at rallies including most recently during Human Rights Day on 21 March. The Space X founder has also repeatedly called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to take action against Malema for ‘inciting violence’ by singing the chant.
The EFF said at no point in South African history have Black people ever victimised white people. The very suggestion is an insult to truth and justice.
“The real victims in this country have always been Black people: enslaved, dispossessed, massacred, and subjected to centuries of institutionalised racism. Yet, it is white supremacists like AfriForum who seek to erase their and their forefathers’ crimes while falsely claiming persecution.
“AfriForum’s consistent fearmongering about so-called “white genocide” is nothing more than racist paranoia, aimed at protecting the ill-gotten privileges of white South Africans. There has never been a campaign of racial violence against white people in this country, yet they continue to manipulate statistics and fabricate crises to justify their reactionary agenda. Even the Presidency had to be reduced today to responding to allegations from AfriForum, and their allies Solidarity, through a meeting with the South African Police Service (SAPS) to verify the statistics on farm murders that simply do not exist as an epidemic or genocide,” the EFF said.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT’S RULING ON THE KILL THE BOER, KILL THE FARMER CHANT?
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