South African opposition figure Julius Malema led his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party on Sunday in chants of “Kill the Boer,” “Shoot to kill,” and “Kill the farmer,” while President Cyril Ramaphosa stayed quiet.
Malema posted footage of his own chant on X, including the incendiary words of the chant in his post.
The chant, which South African courts have refused to ban despite its potential for violent incitement and its apparent violation of the South African Constitution’s ban on hate speech, came up last week in Ramaphosa’s meeting in the Oval Office with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Trump made Ramaphosa sit through a video, including footage of Malema leading the chant, after the South African leader pushed back on Trump’s claims of “genocide” in his country.
When pressed by a reporter about whether he has “denounced that type of language,” Ramaphosa claimed, “Oh, yes. We’ve always done so. As a government, as my own party, we are completely opposed to that.” He referred to his party’s 1955 manifesto, the Freedom Charter.
However, local reporters who questioned Ramaphosa on his return to South Africa noted that he had never actually condemned the “Kill the Boer” chant. Ramaphosa again refused to do so on Saturday:
Ramaphosa invoked the inspirational example of President Nelson Mandela several times during his meeting with Trump. However, notably, Mandela condemned hate speech and embraced Afrikaners as countrymen.
Afrikaner leaders have said that Ramaphosa’s refusal to condemn genocidal language by political leaders should result in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) dismissing South Africa’s case against Israel based on (misquoted) Biblical language referred to by South African lawyers as genocidal.
Ironically, the same lawyer who called for Israel to be condemned also represented Malema in defending his “Kill the Boer” rhetoric.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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