ONE important element in the murder of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader Eugene TerreBlanche — and one that has been generally overlooked — is that one of the suspects is only 15 years old. A mere child. But then he is just one of the many South African children who are raping young women and children and murdering people, black and white, old and young, rich and poor.
While pundits are arguing about whether there is a link between hate speech and violent behaviour, we forget that in SA we have mounted huge print and billboard campaigns to influence behaviour.
We also forget that racial polarisation is fuelled by politicians. When some disaster such as this brutal murder strikes, the public is called upon to be calm and to refrain from opening up the chasm of the racial fault-line.
So easily do politicians use race and ethnicity to mobilise the electorate. So easily do they engage in murderous verbiage, singing songs such as Bring Me My Machine Gun, Kill the Boer — not to mention the many Xhosa and Zulu struggle songs that are better left untranslated. But the politicians never take responsibility for their actions.
Not so long ago an African National Congress (ANC) youth leader in Bloemfontein called for Jonathan Jansen, rector of the University of the Free State, to be killed. At President ’s rape trial, young people chanted they would kill for Zuma. No wonder hundreds of Somali traders in the Cape have been killed by black South Africans. No wonder the outbreak of xenophobic violence was one of our biggest spectacles of shame.
Hundreds die on our roads routinely; about 18000 are murdered annually, and thousands die from AIDS and related infectious diseases. Life in SA is cheap and political leaders give their stamp of approval to the obliteration of life by defending such stupid songs that are sung at rallies where thousands of their followers are led to believe it is okay to mimic these mindless murderous anthems .
Whether they have a place in our history or not, they are still stupid, and many of us sang those songs even though we often cringed at the words.
But back to Malema. In a school in Cape Town pupils are mobilising against him, claiming he is no role model for the young and does not represent them. Last year I addressed Bright Young Minds, an organisation of gifted youth, who decried the coverage this idiot gets in the newspapers, when so many of them are involved in nation-building activities and want to be proud and patriotic South Africans.
Personally, I am outraged that a creep such as Malema hurls dogma about nationalisation, land reform, Mugabe, and Zimbabwe at us adults who were in the trenches, working towards democracy, when he was in nappies. He is an insult to many of us — and unlike the adults in the ANC who are fearful of condemning him, I shall do it in this column on behalf of many others in SA. We are simply gatvol at having to witness ANC leaders shudder in their boots at the megalomaniac they have created.
The ANC needs a radical overhaul. It needs to be transformed into a modern democratic party that is prepared to jettison the liberation claptrap.
Its continuous harking back to struggle mode, invoking outdated socialist and communist rhetoric while looting the state coffers to support their profligate supra-capitalist lifestyles, exposes it for what it is. No longer will we as a nation be fobbed off by empty slogans such as “the people shall govern”, “jobs for all”, “end poverty”, and so on, when all the ANC leaders are concerned about is ending their own poverty and enriching themselves.
Just because the ANC Youth League was the kingmaker at Polokwane, Malema has been made to believe he is invincible and wallows happily in every bit of attention the stupid media bestows on him. Do we not owe it to our young people to take him off the pages? Does the ANC not owe it to us to investigate his ill-gotten gains? What message are we sending to our millions of poor and unemployed youth? Seek ye first the ANC kingdom and all the tenders shall be given unto you?
- Kadalie is a human rights activist based in Cape Town.