Serving Julius Malema with a dose of his own medicine is the purpose of Steve Hofmeyr’s open letter, Skiet My Eerste, Malema (Shoot Me First, Malema), the singer says.
Read the full letter and commentary by Chris Roper:
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“Malema’s the one who reckons that traditional songs will not have any influence out there — but look [at] the reaction to my letter,” Hofmeyr told the Mail & Guardian. He posted the letter on his website two weeks ago.
The letter is “an over-angry reaction”, he says, “but it’s the kind of thing that Malema should be expecting … If you want to open this can of worms and we’re going to launch insults to and fro, then it’s the kind of thing that [Malema] must accept.
“If the Afrikaners must accept that they need to be shot because they are racists, I will need to remind Malema that when they wrote a book about African intellectuals, they could only find six.”
He referred the Mail & Guardian to the book African Intellectuals in 19th and Early 20th Century South Africa, edited by Mcebisi Ndletyana and published in 2008.
“It’s not that you don’t get intellectuals [in Africa],” Hofmeyr said, “it’s that you do not get intellectuals anywhere in the world not defined against the Western background of philosophy.”
He said that if anyone can point him to an African intellectual who is not influenced by Western thought, he will “happily” remove the comment from his website.
But he will not withdraw the letter, even “if it can be read in the wrong context. Isn’t that what he [Malema] is asking for as well? That if you talk about raping a certain tribe in Africa, that it should be seen in context?”