‘Kill the Boer’ chant is hate speech: Ayanda Zulu

Key topics:

• Malema guilty of hate speech over rally comments

• Courts split on "Kill the Boer" chant rulings

• Call for global pressure to ban divisive chant

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By Ayanda Sakhile Zulu*

I welcomed the Equality Court's recent ruling on 27 August, which found Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema guilty of hate speech over comments he made during a political rally in Cape Town in October 2022.

This is the third time that Malema – a figure who thrives on polarising society by scapegoating and demonising white people – has been found guilty of hate speech. The court’s Western Cape Division rightly held that his remark, “Revolution demands that at some point there must be killing,” could be understood as an incitement to harm the white person he was targeting for alleged racism.

What I found both interesting and refreshing this time is that the court rejected Malema’s (and by extension the EFF’s) tired defence of “context” and figurative expressions about “white supremacy” and “Black Consciousness.” Instead, it interpreted his call to kill literally and classified it for what it is: hate speech.

Regrettably, the same approach was not taken in August 2022 when the Kill the Boer chant was under scrutiny. Rather than uphold a 2011 ruling that treated the chant as hate speech, Judge Edwin Molahlehi entertained the EFF’s claim that it had “political and historical context” and was aimed at a "system of oppression" rather than a literal call for white farmers to be killed.

This logic remains nonsensical. The only reason it was accepted was not because of its supposed “superiority,” but because South Africa’s judicial institutions have become increasingly infiltrated by individuals who are either aligned with the political ideology of parties like the EFF or sympathetic to it. Anyone who thinks this claim is far-fetched must remember the 2011 ruling on the chant and further remember that judges, like the rest of us, are human and bring their own biases to the bench.

It goes without saying to anyone with a moral compass that Kill the Boer is a deeply problematic and divisive chant in a country still struggling to achieve peaceful coexistence after a history built on division. It offends many white South Africans not because they “misunderstand its context” or because they are racists who believe that most black South Africans take it literally, but because the very party leading the chant is openly antagonistic towards them.

The EFF routinely demonises them as “racists,” “apartheid beneficiaries,” and worse. It scapegoats them for the country’s failures and devotes itself to convincing black South Africans that they are at the heart of their problems. It promotes policies such as land expropriation that are designed to dispossess and pauperise them. Against this backdrop, how could any reasonable person fail to, at the very least, understand the outrage when thousands chant Kill the Boer at the FNB Stadium, for instance?

Another dimension of the EFF’s antagonism is that it does this deliberately. It knows full well that the chant is offensive to many white South Africans, and yet it continues to defend it because it enjoys making them feel uncomfortable in a country to which they have an equal claim. Again, what reasonable person wouldn’t understand the anger of people who have pleaded for something to stop, only to see it carried on for purely malicious reasons?

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This leads to the question of interpretation and whether the chant incites violence. There is clear evidence that it can. Ntuthuko Chuene’s murder case at the TRC in the 1990s remains the strongest example of how the chant was taken literally and used as justification for killing. Since then, several other perpetrators have acknowledged being inspired by it to harm others.

That this has not yet happened on a mass scale does not make it any less serious, as some have argued. What matters is that there is proof the chant can be – and has been – interpreted as a call to violence. This alone should be enough to concern anyone with a moral compass.

The Constitutional Court’s dismissal of AfriForum’s application for leave to appeal in March was deeply unfortunate. This decision effectively shut down the legal avenue for challenging the chant.

What remains for AfriForum and other civil society organisations is to continue mobilising the international community to pressure the South African government to denounce the chant as hate speech and call for its banning.

As I argued in a recent clip on X, Kill the Boer is hate speech. It cannot be protected under the banner of free speech because it is divisive and inflammatory. Supporting international pressure on South Africa in this regard does not undermine sovereignty. It is a legitimate fight for justice in a country where the judiciary has accepted the logic of radical forces that thrive on division.

 Unity at best, or peaceful coexistence at the very least, can only be possible once we recognise each other’s shared humanity and commit to extending basic decency and respect.

*Ayanda Sakhile Zulu holds a BSocSci in Political Studies from the University of Pretoria and is an intern at the Free Market Foundation.