By Enyichukwu Enemanna
South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, on Tuesday said the “kill the farmer” chant only represents an apartheid-era slogan, a period of racial discrimination by the white minority in the country against the blacks, and not a call for murder, dismissing the claim by US President, Donald Trump, that it is used to commit genocide against the whites.
During Ramaphosa’s visit to Washington last week, Trump had ambushed him with clips of an opposition politician, Julius Malema, chanting “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer”, saying it was an orchestrated campaign of violence against white farmers.
The US leader also asked why Julius Malema, whom Trump mistakenly said was a government official, had not been arrested.
Ramaphosa told journalists that the government accepts 2010 court rulings that the controversial slogan should be considered in the context of the liberation struggle against the brutal system of white-minority rule called apartheid.
“It’s not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to be killed,” Ramaphosa said.
“We are a country where freedom of expression is in the bedrock of our constitutional arrangements,” he said, brushing aside the suggestion that Malema should be arrested.
Use of the chant after the end of apartheid in 1994 angers many in South Africa, and some groups have made attempts to ban it, calling it hate speech.
A ban in 2010 was lifted after courts said it does not constitute hate speech and instead should be regarded in its historical context, and for the fact that it was being used by Malema only as a “provocative means of advancing his party’s political agenda”.
Malema, who portrays himself as the defender of society’s most disadvantaged, has since vowed to continue to chant the song, saying it is the country’s heritage struggle against apartheid.
