Lobby group AfriForum has suffered another defeat in its fight to have the singing of apartheid-era song Kill the Boer declared hate speech as the Constitutional Court dismissed its application for leave to appeal on Thursday.
“The application should be dismissed as it bears no reasonable prospects of success,” the court order reads.
AfriForum has for years failed to persuade the courts that singing the song is hate speech and should be prohibited. It lost the case at the Equality Court.
The court, in its judgment, said the song was a political one and should be left to the political arena for contestation.
“The singing of the impugned song and its lyrics should be left to the political contestations and engagement on its message by the political role players,” the equality court judgment reads.
“Accordingly, a reasonable listener would conclude that the song does not constitute hate speech but rather that it deserves to be protected under the rubric of freedom of speech.”
The singing of the song has recently been a point of debate in the SA’s troubled ties with America as President Donald Trump’s righthand man Elon Musk took issue with it and wanted EFF leader Julius Malema to face the music for it.
Recently, Malema sang the song, which has had different versions, from “Kill the Boer” to “Kiss the Boer”, during a rally in Sharpeville on Human Rights Day.
Musk said Malema was “promoting white genocide”.
“Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide. A whole arena chanting about killing white people.”
There have been debates about the song. While some people believe it causes further tensions in a country suffering from racism, others believe it is a historical song that sets to remind the people of South Africa about the liberation struggle and should not be wiped from history.
Trump also joined the criticism saying “bad things are happening in South Africa” after President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Expropriation Act “which repeals the predemocratic Expropriation Act of 1975 and sets out how organs of state may expropriate land in the public interest for varied reasons”.
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