The Independent Democrats (ID) appealed in an open letter to the African National Congress on Sunday to drop their challenge to a court finding over the words “shoot the boer”.
The Johannesburg High Court ruled on Friday that the use of the words “dubul’ ibhunu” [shoot the boer] was unlawful and unconstitutional.
Delmas businessman Willem Harmse had applied for an urgent interdict to prevent his colleague Mahomed Vawda from using the words on banners and singing them during a planned march against crime.
While Harmse argued that the words perpetuated hate speech and incited hatred, Vawda contended that they referred to the symbolic killing of apartheid.
The ANC, which reportedly intends appealing against the judgement, expressed astonishment at the court’s failure to approach it for input on the history and purpose of the struggle song Ayesaba Amagwala [The Cowards are Scared].
The song’s lyrics include the words: “aw dubul’ ibhunu [shoot the boer] ‘a magwala [the cowards are scared] dubula dubula [shoot shoot]”.
‘Tit-for-tat squabbles’
In the letter, the secretary general of the ID, Haniff Hoosen, appealed to his ANC counterpart, Gwede Mantashe, to “rise above the current tit-for-tat racial squabbles in our country, which are achieving nothing more than taking our country backwards”.
Hoosen said the current climate about the singing of the song was reminiscent of pre-1994 intolerance.
” … Some amongst us have either failed to see the danger of our actions and words, or simply do not care.
“As a consequence thereof, they have regrettably been unable to resist the temptation of hate speech and the blatant promotion of racial intolerance and violence.”
He said whatever the outcome of the ANC’s appeal, his fear was that the country would be the biggest loser.
“I am therefore making an earnest appeal to you and other senior leaders of the ANC to give serious consideration to suspending your process of appealing the ruling and instead convene a national debate on racial tolerance and reconciliation.”
Racial tolerance
Hoosen said he agreed with the ANC’s view that history should not be erased by court judgements, but added that he believed the singing of struggle songs with the potential to divide people should be discouraged.
“Our country is in desperate need of the kind of racial tolerance, unity and reconciliation that we had in the years following the attainment of freedom in 1994.
“Comrade [Gwede] Mantashe, I trust that you and your party will do what needs to be done in order to revive that spirit of tolerance, in the same way as was achieved by former president Nelson Mandela.”
‘Old struggle song’
Earlier this month, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe cautioned against “systematically erasing history”, and said the interpretation of the song had been “vulgarised”.
“It’s an old struggle song. Anybody who relegates it into hate speech today … I will regard that as a serious attempt to erase our history. If you try to erase the history through courts, that would be unfortunate to the country.”
Complaints have recently been laid against ANC Youth League president Julius Malema with the Equality Court and the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) over his repeated singing of the song in public. – Sapa