The high court bid to ban the words “shoot the boer” was a farce, the ANC said on Tuesday.
“It appears to us that an artificial contestation was created to arrive at a predetermined outcome,” said ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe briefing the media on the meeting of party officials held on Monday.
The South Gauteng High Court ruled on Friday that the use of the words “dubul’ ibhunu” [shoot the boer] was unconstitutional and unlawful.
The party arrived at its conclusion after studying the judgement.
“They [the respondent and the applicant] are in the same organisation … they went to court with a predetermined outcome. They went there to go through the motions.”
Delmas businessman Willem Harmse applied for the interdict to prevent his colleague Mohammed Vawda from using the words on banners and during a planned march against crime. Both men belong to the same organisation, the Society for the Protection of the Constitution.
ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu described the judgement as incompetent.
“[The judgment] was just a freeline judgement … there is so much injustice that emanates from the judgement,” he said.
The ANC intends appealing the judgment in an effort to obtain a more correct constitutional interpretation of the struggle songs it deems to form a big part of the country’s history.
” … the hot debate about the freedom struggle songs is a manifestation of a society that has not come to terms with its past.
“We are dealing with a society that wants to wish its own history away by picking up on any petty issue that triggers disagreements and conflict,” Mantashe said.
Cosatu agrees with ANC
The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Monday said it opposed the banning of the words “shoot the boer”, saying they were part of the historic fight against apartheid.
“Cosatu agrees fully with the ANC’s argument that the song Ayesaba Amagwala [The Cowards are Scared] is part of the historic fight of the people against apartheid, led by the ANC,” it said in a statement.
“Cosatu is concerned at the implications of the South Gauteng High Court’s ruling that the words … are unconstitutional and illegal.”
Cosau said it conceded that if interpreted literally, the words could be seen as promoting racial hatred and inciting violence.
However, it said that such songs had evolved in the context of a society “where the black majority were disenfranchised at the barrel of a gun by a small white minority and their illegitimate government”.
“The words reflect the extreme anger of people who were systematically attacked and murdered by the state … were denied all basic rights and did not have any constitutional and legal means to fight back.”
The songs sung in those days inevitably reflected the armed struggle against a system which was condemned as a crime against humanity, Cosatu said.
“Cosatu fully embraces every effort to forge unity and bury the racial divisions of the past. This does not however mean that we have forgotten the pain and suffering of the past.”