{"id":235190,"date":"2022-08-25T12:26:32","date_gmt":"2022-08-25T10:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/judge-rules-kill-boer---kill-farmer-not-hate-speech\/"},"modified":"2022-08-25T12:26:32","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T10:26:32","slug":"judge-rules-that-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-is-not-hate-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/judge-rules-that-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-is-not-hate-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge rules that \u201cKill the boer &#8211; Kill the farmer\u201d is not hate speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/Graphics\/lisa_nelson\/scales-of-justice.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/judge-rules-that-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-is-not-hate-speech.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">The Equality Court has dismissed Afriforum\u2019s application and ordered it to pay the EFF\u2019s costs. Illustration: Lisa Nelson<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Equality Court in Johannesburg has ruled that the singing of \u201cKill the Boer &#8211; Kill the Farmer\u201d by EFF supporters in Senekal in October 2020 was not hate speech.<\/li>\n<li>The judge also ruled that the lyrics \u201ccall the fire brigade\u201d did not constitute hate speech.<\/li>\n<li>The case was brought by Afriforum, who were ordered to pay the EFF\u2019s costs in the case.<\/li>\n<li>The judge left the door open for the chant to be \u201coffensive and undermining\u201d in a different context.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The singing of the song Dubul\u2019 ibhunu &#8211; \u201cKill the Boer &#8211; Kill the Farmer\u201d &#8211; was not hate speech, Judge Edwin Molahlehi, sitting as an Equality Court in the High Court in Johannesburg, ruled on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt does not constitute hate speech and deserves to be protected under the rubric of freedom of speech &#8211; it articulates the failure of the current government to address issues of economic empowerment and land division,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Molahlehi was giving judgment in a matter brought by Afriforum against the EFF and its leader Julius Malema. It comes after supporters of the EFF chanted the slogan outside the Magistrate\u2019s Court in Senekal in October 2020 where those accused of murdering farm manager Brendin Horner were appearing.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/judge-rules-that-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-is-not-hate-speech.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>In 2011, Malema was found guilty of \u201chate speech\u201d by Johannesburg High Court Judge Colin Lamont (sitting as an Equality Court) who ruled that \u201cthe morality of society dictates\u201d that he and others should not use the words, nor sing the song.<\/p>\n<p>Malema appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal, but the matter was withdrawn after the parties agreed to mediate.<\/p>\n<p>However, Afriforum, in the case before Judge Molahlehi argued that Malema was still duty bound not to sing the song and to discourage his supporters from doing so because it incited racial hatred, in particular against farmers, who were under siege in constant farm attacks.<\/p>\n<p>Afriforum wanted Judge Molahlehi to issue another interdict against Malema and the party, order the EFF to apologise, pay R50,000 to an appropriate organisation and refer the matter to the National Director of Public Prosecutions to investigate whether Malema, or other office bearers, should be criminally charged.<\/p>\n<p>But Judge Molahlehi dismissed the application and ordered Afriforum to pay the EFF\u2019s costs.<\/p>\n<p>The judge said none of Afriforum\u2019s witnesses, including Ernst Roets, its head of policy and action, had laid a proper basis for their complaints. None were \u201cexperts\u201d and in the case of Roets, he was \u201cnot neutral or independent\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Two survivors of farm attacks who gave evidence on behalf of Afriforum, had also provided no link to the singing of the song and what happened to them. One had been attacked in 2008. The EFF was only formed in 2013. \u201cIn this context, the question is how the singing of the song (by the EFF), could have triggered the attack,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n<p>Referring to Malema\u2019s evidence, he said he had not disputed chanting \u201cKill the Boer &#8211; Kill the Farmer\u201d while he was president of the youth league but in his current position he only chanted \u201cKiss the Boer, Kiss the Farmer\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He said the word \u201ckiss\u201d had been deliberately chosen to offend the white people who believed that blacks should not kiss whites.<\/p>\n<p>He said neither chants should be taken literally and they had been used during the apartheid era when black policeman had abused people in townships. They referred to the \u201coppressive state\u201d in the context of struggle, and African culture.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Molahllehi said the purpose of the Equality Act was to advance constitutional values and promote democracy.<\/p>\n<p>He said he was not bound by the previous judgment by Judge Lamont because the Constitutional Court had deemed the provision of the Act \u2013 which prohibited speech that was \u201charmful\u201d \u2013 to be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe broad principle of freedom of expression is tolerance of different views. Society has a duty to allow and be tolerant of both popular and unpopular views of its members,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Afriforum had failed to show that the lyrics showed a clear intention to incite harm or propagate hatred. Its witnesses could not speak to the philosophy and history of the song.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe most important aspect of Malema\u2019s evidence was that it has a significant relationship to issues of land. It was sung during the apartheid regime because of the dispossession of land by colonial powers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccording to him, it is directed to land issues, and the failures of the current government,\u201d the judge said. \u201cIt is intended to mobilise the youth to become part of the struggle for economic freedom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe testified that land justice cuts across racial demographics, to even include white women.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI find no reason to reject his evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The judge said that while under a different inquiry, the chant may be found to be \u201coffensive and undermining\u201d, Afriforum had failed to make out a case that it was hate speech, as defined in the Act.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/judge-rules-that-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-is-not-hate-speech.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Equality Court has dismissed Afriforum\u2019s application and ordered it to pay the EFF\u2019s costs. Illustration: Lisa Nelson The Equality Court in Johannesburg has ruled that the singing of \u201cKill the Boer &#8211; Kill the Farmer\u201d by EFF supporters in Senekal in October 2020 was not hate speech. The judge also ruled that the lyrics [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-235190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/judge-rules-that-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-is-not-hate-speech.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}