Malema defends song

himself against hate speech charges over a song with the lyrics “shoot the farmer”.
The anti-apartheid struggle song has been at the centre of a politically charged controversy in South Africa, where Julius Malema, the president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) youth league, is locked in a legal battle with a white lobby group that wants it banned as hate speech.
Hundreds of Malema supporters who were bussed in from around the country packed the street in front of the Johannesburg court house where he appeared yesterday, cheering, singing and dancing as his testimony was broadcast live on a giant TV screen outside.
Malema told the court that the song – whose Zulu chorus, “Dubula ibhulu”, means “shoot the boer”, or farmer – was not his personal anthem but part of ANC heritage and a legacy of the struggle against white-minority rule.
“This is an old song that was sang by leaders before us and we are just continuing with it. This is not my song,” he said.
He denied that the lyrics, which he has made his trademark at rallies, targeted white people or were meant to incite violence, saying the word “ibhulu” meant only “oppressor”. “Our struggle has never been directed at white people,” he said. But Afriforum, the lobby group that brought the case, argues the word – which is itself derived from the word “boer” in Afrikaans, the language descended from South Africa’s Dutch colonisers – is used to single out whites. “The word ‘boer’, in this context, is a derogatory word referring to farmers, whites and to Afrikaners in particular,” it said in an affidavit.
The proceedings have captivated South Africa as top ANC leaders and ministers have taken the stand to defend the song as a piece of national history, while lawyers for Afriforum have argued it constitutes hate speech and incites anti-white violence.
With proceedings broadcast on television, the debate has galvanised the country in the run-up to local elections on May 18. Malema supporters, who crowded outside the court carrying signs with slogans like “Our history will never be erased” and “Dubula song belongs to South Africans”, defended the song’s place in history and the youth leader’s right to sing it. – AFP.