Malema, music and murder

Liv Shange 12 May 2010

The murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche a week after the Johannesburg High Court banned ANC Youth league president Julius Malema’s new found signature tune, Dubhul’ ibhunu (“shoot the Boer”) revealed beneath the racialised, legalistic and narrow-minded surface of the debate, important political currents at play.

Citing unofficial figures of 3 000 farm murders since 1994, the right-wing party Freedom Front+ (FF+) claims “Dubhul’ ibhunu” directly incites violence against Afrikaners, farmers especially.

Terre’Blanche’s gruesome death led to open howls for Malema’s blood. There is no evidence of a political motive or of Malema’s influence in the murder – only conflict over unpaid wages or sexual abuse or both. Although a majority of whites probably detest the song, only a loud but small, racist minority hold Malema responsible. In truth Malema does not have to sing provocative songs to cause racial tensions any more than Bok van der Blerk has to by singing “De La Rey”. Racial tensions are caused by the deteriorating social conditions affecting the working class majority, both white and black, the polarisation between the classes and therefore between the races. Although crime affects all races, poor urban blacks are the most vulnerable despite the horrors of farm killings.

Banning the song solves nothing and must be opposed. It risks creating a more authoritarian social climate. The arrogant opportunist Malema deserves what he gets. But the banning sets a dangerous precedent. It curtails freedom of speech and can be used against activists, striking workers, or protesting students and township residents. Increased state control over free speech must be resisted. Social movements, unions, community-, youth- and student organisations should use mass action to expose actual hate speech, and isolate those who try to use it to divide us.

Dubhul’ ibhunu has very little relevance today. In the struggle against apartheid, it rallied the black oppressed against a white minority regime dominated by amabhunu – Afrikaners. The painful truth is that for all the MK (and Apla) cadres’ heroism and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, the armed struggle played very little role in the overthrow of apartheid. Nor was it ever the ANC leadership’s objective to take over Pretoria with tanks. The armed struggle was intended to no more than persuade the regime to come to the negotiating table. The ANC leadership argues that “ibhunu” is a metaphor for white minority rule. But that “Boer” has been dead and buried for 16 years. The song is an anachronism (outside its time).

Malema is highlighting disparities in racial income and wealth not so much to “inflame racial tensions” for its own sake as suggested by the FF+, but to justify the self-enrichment of the aspirant black capitalists and to divert attention from the controversy over his own tenderpreneur wealth. Critics of black self-enrichment must be discredited as racists who want to deny blacks the same “right” as whites to get rich. His vulgar abuse of BBC journalist, Jonah Fisher, televised worldwide was for drawing attention to the hypocrisy of this champion of the poor, residing in Sandton – the richest suburb in Africa.

Malema’s radical posturing entails the use of racialised rhetoric, invoking emotional struggle slogans mixed with sexist insults to portray himself as a rebel articulating the frustrations of youth tired of the compromises with white capital. Focusing on the fact that the racially charged class divide in SA has actually widened 16 years after the end of Apartheid, Malema tries to radicalise the youth with battle cries that are as loud and crude as they are anti-working class. He poses as a left-wing populist rebel, but is no more than a spokesperson for aspiring black capitalists, a clown of little more relevance to working class youth than the late Terre’Blanche
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 http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,2039

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