Elon Musk has once more waded into South African politics, tweeting on Sunday about “a significant political social gathering … that’s actively selling white genocide”.
Sharing a hyperlink to a video of Financial Freedom Fighters (EFF) chief Julius Malema singing Dubul’ ibhunu (“Kill the Boer”) at a rally on Friday, Musk expressed outrage at “an entire area chanting about killing white folks.”
US President Donald Trump – who counts Musk, the world’s richest man, as an in depth ally – shared a screenshot of the submit on Reality Social. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio penned his own tweet denouncing the tune as “a chant that incites violence,” urging the South African authorities to “shield Afrikaner and different disfavored minorities” and reiterating an invitation to Afrikaners to settle within the US.
However what is that this tune, and does it have multiple interpretation? Does it represent hate speech, and who’s Julius Malema? And why is the Trump administration so involved about South Africa?
What’s the tune all about?
The isiXhosa battle tune Dubul’ ibhunu – the title actually interprets to “Kill the Boer” however may imply “Kill the Afrikaner” – emerged through the Nineteen Eighties, as opposition to greater than three a long time of apartheid rule spilled onto the streets of South Africa’s townships. The title of the tune is usually additionally translated as “Kill the white farmer”.
Boer is the Afrikaans phrase for farmer, and on one degree, it merely means farmer, of any race. However for the reason that nineteenth century (when Britain fought two wars in opposition to the Boers) it has additionally meant “Afrikaans individual”.
The tune’s lyrics primarily repeat the title’s phrases – “Shoot the Boer” advert infinitum, describing the Boers as “cowards” and “canine”.
“It was a part of the theatre of mass riot,” stated historian Thula Simpson. “That’s how it’s remembered to at the present time.”
Simpson added that the tune is sort of all the time accompanied by toyi-toying – a protest dance that is still synonymous with Black political rallies in South Africa – and is usually punctuated by folks pretending to shoot Kalashnikov rifles.
Regardless of being extraordinarily controversial, the tune continues to be sung in democratic South Africa, most notably by Malema and by former President Jacob Zuma – his version is kind of totally different – each of whom have left the African Nationwide Congress, the social gathering of Nelson Mandela and the liberation motion, to kind their very own events.
The ANC, which has dominated South Africa since its first democratic elections in 1994, has seen its help plummet in recent times amid allegations of corruption, misgovernance and damaged guarantees. Final 12 months, it misplaced its majority for the primary time and is now ruling in coalition with a variety of events which have lengthy opposed its insurance policies.
“By singing the tune, Malema is making an attempt to current himself because the genuine ANC,” defined Simpson. “It’s all about outflanking the ANC from the left.”
Who’s Julius Malema?
Malema shot to prominence in 2008 when, as president of the ANC Youth League, he vehemently defended then-president Zuma who was going through prosecution on corruption expenses. “We’re ready to die for Zuma,” Malema famously informed a rally. “We’re ready to take up arms and kill for Zuma.”
By 2012 Malema had remodeled into Zuma’s greatest critic, and after his expulsion from the ANC, he fashioned the EFF as a populist, far-left motion.
He first sang Dubul’ ibhunu in 2010, whereas nonetheless ANCYL chief but it surely has since change into one thing of an EFF calling card. His newest rendition – the one Musk is at present objecting to – got here at a rally on Friday commemorating the Sharpeville Bloodbath on March 21, 1960, by which at least 91 Black people were shot dead by apartheid policemen.
Since 1994, South Africa has marked March 21 as Human Rights Day – “an event to recommit ourselves to the development of human rights for all,” says President Cyril Ramaphosa. However Malema rejects this, saying that the vacation must be referred to as “Sharpeville Bloodbath Day” as a result of to provide it some other identify “undermines the reminiscence of these fallen troopers who died for our rights as Black folks”.
“No matter your opinion of Malema,” stated veteran political commentator Stephen Grootes, “his distinctive promoting level is that he’s the loudest voice in opposition to anti-Black racism in SA.”
Is the tune actually a name for white genocide?
Malema has repeatedly said – each in court docket and in interviews – that “we aren’t calling for the slaughter of white folks, no less than for now”.
And the facts bear this view out: there has by no means been something near an tried genocide of white South Africans.
Trump and his supporters typically declare that white South African farmers are being murdered of their 1000’s – however statistics offered by AfriForum and the Transvaal Agricultural Union (each teams sympathetic to white farmers) present that about 60 farmers, throughout all races, are killed yearly. This can be a nation that sees 19,000 murders yearly.
Anecdotal proof factors to the identical conclusion.
Grootes was one among “about 5 whites” within the viewers the very first time Malema sang the tune in public in 2010: “When he sang it, I didn’t discover. It wasn’t in English, and nobody round me thought it was an enormous occasion on the time … as a whitey, with an Afrikaans-sounding surname, I didn’t really feel threatened, harassed, scared … I didn’t get the sensation that the folks round me had been being incited to shoot me.”
Each Malema and AfriForum – the Afrikaner rights group which lately despatched a delegation to the Trump White Home to hunt his help in opposition to South African authorities insurance policies – have used the tune as a rallying level for his or her (diametrically opposed) agendas.
That places the extra average ANC in a tough state of affairs. “Ramaphosa wouldn’t sing the tune himself,” stated Simpson. “However he hasn’t denounced it both, and his silence means one thing.”
Can or not it’s legally sung?
Malema has needed to defend his resolution to sing the tune in a number of court docket instances since 2010. Lots of the earlier rulings went in opposition to him, discovering that the tune’s lyrics constituted “hate speech” and weren’t protected by the suitable to freedom of speech enshrined in South Africa’s structure.
Extra lately, nevertheless, the tide has turned in his favour, with the Johannesburg Excessive Court docket discovering in 2022 that AfriForum, which has challenged the suitable to sing the tune, had did not show that Malema was inciting hurt in opposition to “white South Africans of Afrikaner descent” by singing it.
This view was confirmed by the Supreme Court docket of Appeals in 2024 which dominated that “the fairly well-informed individual would recognize that when Mr Malema sang Dubula ibhunu … he was not really calling for farmers, or white South Africans of Afrikaans descent to be shot, nor was he romanticising the violence exacted in opposition to them in farm assaults.”
“They might perceive that he was utilizing an historic battle tune, with the efficiency gestures that go along with it, as a provocative technique of advancing his social gathering’s political agenda,” the court docket stated.
Why do Musk, Trump and Rubio care?
The tune is one among a number of South African political hotcakes – others embody the Expropriation With out Compensation Act, and the coverage of Black Financial Empowerment – which might be inflaming Trump’s MAGA motion. Trump had spoken in regards to the “large-scale killing of farmers” in South Africa in 2018, too.
“Trump and Musk know that in the event that they dangle any of those points,” stated Simpson, “they may get a sure response. South Africa has change into a helpful foil in America’s domestic culture wars.”
Apparently, Musk’s and Trump’s response to “Kill the Boer” is extra excessive than AfriForum’s.
“When Trump spoke about farmers being murdered in 2018, AfriForum was eager to dissociate itself from the concept that there was a white genocide,” stated Simpson. “They’re very conscious that they’re being accused of all types of disinformation, so that they have to color inside the strains. Trump and Musk, nevertheless, haven’t any such limitations.”
For Musk and Trump, although, the equation is easier, urged Grootes. “South Africa is the embodiment of DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion],” he stated. “In fact, Trump hates us.”
