JOHANNESBURG—It’s winter in South Africa, 1993, and the headlines are being written around the world: The long-awaited racial conflagration is about to erupt in a country that’s experiencing the final death throes of apartheid.
A Polish white supremacist, with white-blond hair and steel-blue eyes, has put a volley of bullets into South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani, a hero of the anti-apartheid resistance movement.
Riots have broken out across the country, townships are ablaze; shotgun blasts and petrol bomb explosions are the sounds of a seemingly stillborn “new” South Africa about to plunge into the abyss.
Members of black and white extremist groups alike are attacking targets with bombs and automatic rifles, and no place is sacrosanct—from churches and bars frequented by white people, to minibus taxis transporting black factory workers.
The land is blood-soaked, and thirsty for more.
The political teams trying to lead South Africa toward some semblance of a constitutional democracy, led by Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress (ANC) and President F.W. de Klerk of the National Party, are at one another’s throats, unable to agree to the terms of a dispensation that is supposed to united black and white citizens.
The mountainous, lush province of KwaZulu-Natal is a battlefield, strewn with the bodies of thousands of ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party impi (warriors), fighting for hegemony in South Africa’s second-most populous region.
Fanning the flames is 34-year-old Peter Mokaba, then leader of the ANC’s Youth League, with a Zulu song called “Dubula Ibhunu” (“Kill the Boer”) and its chorus of “Kill the [white] farmer! Shoot to kill!”
Back in 1982, apartheid police arrested the firebrand for crimes related to his underground activities as a member of the ANC’s paramilitary wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation).
He was convicted of possessing weapons and undergoing military training in Mozambique and Angola. He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment on Robben Island but, on appeal, was released after a year.
This raised questions at the time, given that such appeals by known members of Umkhonto were extremely rare.
Mr. Mokaba continued his guerrilla activities until Mr. De Klerk released Mr. Mandela and unbanned the ANC in 1990.
Several charges were brought against Mr. Mokaba in relation to these alleged crimes, but he was continually acquitted, and he was elected to the ANC’s elite National Executive Committee in 1991.
When apartheid ended following the first multiracial elections in 1994, with South Africa having avoided full-blown race-based civil war, Mr. Mandela appointed Mr. Mokaba as a deputy minister in the ANC government after the party’s victory at the polls.
Less than 10 years later, Mr. Mokaba was dead. His doctor said he’d died of “acute pneumonia,” but many, even in the ANC, said he’d been a victim of untreated HIV.
Mr. Mokaba often told supporters HIV and AIDS were “key elements of a Western plot” to “wipe out” blacks and “regain colonial control” in Africa.
Reviving the Chant
Former apartheid security operatives have claimed that Mr. Mokaba never spent significant time in jail because he was a spy for the apartheid government—a claim denied by Mr. Mokaba and the ANC.“Peter Mokaba will always be my all-time hero; I met him many times; I would say I was his pupil. He came from the same area in Limpopo [Province] as me,” said Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, South Africa’s third-largest political party.
“I have modeled by political career on Peter Mokaba and President Robert Mugabe,” he told The Epoch Times, referring to the former president of Zimbabwe who was best-known for seizing land belonging to white farmers in the 2000s and plunging his nation into hunger and economic meltdown.
Thirty years after Mr. Mokaba first bellowed “Kill the farmer! Kill the boer!” Mr. Malema has revived the chant. He and 100,000 followers, most dressed in red overalls and red berets, sang it at a party rally at a stadium in Soweto, the sprawling township near Johannesburg, on July 29.
The next day, a white farmer was found bludgeoned to death in his homestead in northeastern Mpumalanga Province.
On Aug. 2, a group of white farmers tried to gain access to the EFF’s headquarters in central Johannesburg, but were forced back by a much larger crowd of EFF supporters, some wielding whips and clubs and shouting “We will kill you!”
Some EFF members aimed kicks and punches at the white men. The farmers didn’t retaliate, and left the area. No serious injuries were reported.
The white men, who declined to give their names, later told The Epoch Times they wanted to speak with Mr. Malema to “clarify” if his repeated singing of the “Kill the Boer” song was calling for the murders of white people.
The EFF leader refused to meet with them, but later addressed the media.
“Here’s not a place where we’re scared of a white man!” Mr. Malema stated. “Here is the only liberated zone in South Africa. No white man comes taking chances here. We’ve got everything we need to defend this office, and we’ll defend it with our lives.”
Civil society groups expressed concern about the violence, saying it was reminiscent of the apartheid era. Some also criticized Mr. Malema for continuing to sing a song that could be interpreted as instigating a race-based civil war.
South Africa’s Human Rights Commission declared the song hate speech in 2003, and several civil rights groups have taken both the ANC and the EFF to court to try to stop their members from singing it in a country with some of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, and where thousands of white farmers have been murdered over the past three decades.
But EFF and ANC supporters have continued to sing it, without repercussions.
It was the subject of a recent case before South Africa’s Equality Court, which declared that it was unable to establish a link between the song and the killings of white people.
Mr. Malema said this ruling was the correct one, because the chant was “symbolic” of black people’s struggle against white supremacy and wasn’t meant to be taken literally.
“I’ll sing this song as and when I feel like. It’s not my song, it’s a struggle song,” he told journalists. “It is my right to sing this historical song. It is part of anti-apartheid history and no-one will interfere with my African heritage.”
Asked by The Epoch Times if he was using the song to incite black citizens to murder their white compatriots, Mr. Malema responded: “I do not have to explain to you, but I have said before that this song is symbolic.
“It should not be taken literally. But if it scares our enemies, good!
“The EFF does not believe in violence, but we are also not scared to defend our people.
“I have said before that all South Africans have a place in our land, if they accept that this is not Europe. This is Africa, and they must be prepared to know their place, otherwise they must go back to Europe.”
Mr. Malema’s defiance spurred opposition member of parliament Pieter Groenewald to lodge a new complaint with the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
“My party, the Freedom Front Plus, has also laid a criminal charge in terms of the Riotous Act that states very clearly that nobody’s allowed to instigate violence,” Mr. Groenewald told The Epoch Times.
“There must be an investigation by the police now and then it must be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority who must make a decision whether they’re going to prosecute or not.”
Mr. Malema accused Mr. Groenewald, a white Afrikaner, of “narrow-mindedness and pure politicking.”
But that’s exactly what the EFF “commander-in-chief’s” critics said he was doing.
Once again, South Africa is on the cusp of a national election, one that could see the ANC fall below the required 50-percent-plus-one threshold that would allow it to continue to enjoy the absolute power that it’s held since April 1994.
If the vote unfolds as polls are predicting, the ANC’s most logical move would be to form a coalition government with the EFF to hold on to governance.
“If this happens, the ANC will obviously have to agree to at least some of the EFF’s policies, and that is a truly terrifying prospect for South Africa,” said professor Susan Booysen, of the Wits University School of Governance in Johannesburg.
The EFF’s policies include “nationalization” of all land and property in South Africa, “for redistribution to the black majority”; nationalization of banks and other financial institutions; and an end to “control of the economy by white monopoly capitalists.”
EFF members have been known for violence since the party was formed in 2013, attacking opponents and assaulting journalists.
On Aug. 2, the chief opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, filed charges at the U.N. Human Rights Council against both the EFF and the ANC based on Mr. Malema’s latest use of the “Kill the Boer” song.
Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen told The Epoch Times that South African authorities were “clearly unable, or unwilling,” to stop the EFF from “resurrecting the demons of ethnic violence and racial hatred.”
“A political leader who incites mass murder is not normal. A member of parliament who calls for the killing of an entire section of society is not normal,” he said.
“Cowardly politicians who turn a blind eye to incitement of civil war, is not normal.
“The first element of our case before the U.N. will focus on Malema’s repeated incitement of ethnic violence.
“The second element will charge the ANC national government over its years-long failure to take action against their one-time protégé, even as brutal farm murders continue to escalate in the wake of Malema’s demagoguery.”
University of Johannesburg politics professor Hennie Strydom said it would be “entirely feasible” for the U.N. to send a team to investigate the Democratic Alliance’s charges, and to decide whether the EFF and ANC should be prosecuted in terms of international law.
“My opinion is that there should be no place in a democratic society for a song that even suggests violence against anyone, no matter their race, religion and so on. What would happen if whites suddenly started singing a song calling for black people to be killed?” Mr. Strydom said.
“This matter should’ve been solved a long time ago. It’s not conducive to peaceful coexistence; it causes a lot of friction, and I think it’s time it’s settled once and for all.
“The Democratic Alliance’s charge at the U.N. is one way of bringing it to the attention of the international community that there is a problem in South Africa, and it’s a dangerous problem that could become crisis if we don’t act soon.”
