Monday, April 05, 2010

Killing of white South African farmer due to hate speech?

We read:
"A South African white supremacist leader was bludgeoned to death by two of his farm workers in an apparent wage dispute, police said, but his followers blamed a fiery youth leader for a "hate speech" which they claim led to his killing.

Eugene Terreblanche's violent death on Saturday came amid growing racial tensions in the once white-led country and underscored an ongoing controversy over African National Congress Youth Leader Julius Malema's performance last month of an apartheid-era song that advocates the killing of white farmers.

Terreblanche, 69, was leader of the white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, that wanted to create three all-white republics within South Africa in which blacks would be allowed only as guest workers.

Andre Nienaber, a member of the group and a relative of Terreblanche, said he believed his death was "as a result of Mr Malema's hate speech and direct orders in the media to 'shoot the Boers dead'".

Boer means white farmers in Afrikaans, the language of descendants of early Dutch settlers, or Afrikaners.

Mr Malema is often in the news for his fiery rhetoric. Last month, he led college students in belting out a song that includes the lyrics "shoot the Boer". Mr Malema did not mention Terreblanche or any other person in his performance.

The song has sparked a legal battle in which the ruling ANC party has challenged a high court which ruled the lyrics were unconstitutional. The ANC insists the song is a valuable part of its cultural heritage and that the lyrics - which also refer to the farmers as thieves and rapists - are not intended literally and are therefore not hate speech.

Source

The irony of this case is that thousands of white farmers in South Africa have been murdered by black gangs in recent years -- with and without any hate speech from black leaders. Blacks in South Africa don't need a song to motivate them to kill vulnerable whites.

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

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