Controversy around Malema’s comments opens up genocide debate

YOU HAVE to hand it to the Teletubby-in-Chief, he’s got everyone speaking – even Xsê, Elon Musk himself. All it took was the usual dollop of race hatred for the cameras, unequivocal and unabashed, celebrating the EFF’s 10th anniversary and the country’s two extremes took up position on either side of the laager.

Singing “Kill the Boer, the farmer, Phrrr pah” isn’t a clarion call to the melanin challenged to pack for Perth, but it was already weaponised as such on social media; suggesting that South Africa no longer belonged to all who lived in it – if you were white. On the other side, the Malema fan boys and girls (some of them quite white too) were saying the call was just a little revolutionary ditty and shouldn’t be taken literally. Just like Julius’ infamous call to slit the throat of whiteness in 2018 was just a figure of speech.

The truth is there is not a white genocide under way - yet.

What is happening to the farmers is appalling, unconscionable and totally unacceptable. It is cruel and vicious and, in some areas, it does appear targeted. But it is not a genocide – in fact it is not even a statistical aberration. A genocide is what happened in the Holocaust against the Jews, it’s what happened in Rwanda, in Namibia against the Hereros. It’s what happened to the San.

That doesn’t make what Malema is singing – or actively encouraging any less hateful. If you don’t think so, just change the demographics of the singers and the subject of the lyrics. It wouldn’t be acceptable to sing kill the blacks, or the coloureds, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or anyone else in between.

It is the bitterest of ironies that Malema gets away with this because of both the residual guilt that many white South Africans deeply feel about the legacy of apartheid and the progressive constitution that was enacted to prevent us ever regressing to those dark days of race hatred.

He isn’t an empty vessel either: A full FNB stadium, if you ignore the Beyoncé like theatrics and the televangelist sky lift, goes a long way to proving his credibility among his constituency at a time when the ANC would struggle to fill Turffontein’s Wembley Stadium.

But on Monday, the DA – not for the first time – heroically misread the room, the bigger room that is, by announcing its intention to report Malema to the United Nations. Leader John Steenhuisen would have done well to remember his history; when confronted by the might of the Roman Catholic Church during World War II, the tyrant Joseph Stalin dismissively asked, “How many divisions does the pope have?”

As one of the architects of lawfare, the DA should have done what the Freedom Front did, open a criminal case against Juju. Once the NPA has Malema bang to rights on that, they can resurrect the 11-year-old Ratanang Trust case – and chuck in VBS too.

To mangle Pastor Martin Niemoller, we never spoke up when we could – and when we should have. We have to speak now while we still can.

* Kevin Ritchie is a seasoned former newspaper editor and current media consultant. He writes the weekly Carping Point column.

** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the DFA.