While welcoming Judge Lamont’s finding that Julius Malema’s songs indeed constituted hate speech, PRAAG, the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group, cautioned against any premature jubilation about the judgement. “South Africa has had a long tradition of Afrikaner hatred that manifests itself in various ways. Mr. Malema’s defiant calls for Afrikaner genocide are but the symptom of a deeper malaise within the Afro-Saxon identity that has become coterminous with being a so-called ‘South African’”, said the Afrikaner group’s leader, Dr. Dan Roodt.
PRAAG regards the singing of anti-Afrikaner and anti-Boer songs by radical black ANCYL members “as but the latest expression of a long tradition of Afrikaner hatred, stretching back to the days of British colonialism. The notion that Afrikaners bear the stigmata of being both outcasts from Europe and from Africa, is a common one and often expressed in South African English. In fact, Mr. Malema’s display of Afrikaner hatred is secretly enjoyed by those who still lament the fact that Britain did not ‘finish the job’ in 1902 and allowed the Boer children and womenfolk to survive, despite an atrocious genocide committed against them at the time. In a certain sense, Mr. Malema is the product of the increasing anglicisation and Afro-Saxonisation of South Africa, so vigorously pursued by the former Minister of Education, Kader Asmal who also detested Afrikaners and Afrikaans.”
Despite the positive outcome of the court case, PRAAG was pessimistic about the future prospects of ethnic coexistence in South Africa. According to Dr. Dan Roodt, “this event should be seen as a small victory on the road to Afrikaner emancipation from the violence, irrationality, corruption and discrimination of the so-called ‘new South Africa’ which is democratic in name only. South Africa is a land of hate which manifests itself in the atrocities of farm murders as well as in the suppression of Afrikaans and the Afrikaner identity by the Afro-Saxon state.”
PRAAG called upon all Afrikaners to join the struggle for lasting freedom, security and peace. “Mr. Malema, like so many others, has trampled upon our dignity and human worth. In the words of Judge Lamont, he was dehumanising us, which is a step on the road to genocide,” Dr. Roodt said. “Like the people of Kosovo and many others who have been subject to ethnic hatred and incessant propaganda, Afrikaners will only be safe in a territory and a republic of their own.”
Roodt also lambasted the “masochistic tendencies of some Afrikaners”, such as author André Brink who stated yesterday on SABC1 that “he belonged to a people who deserved extinction” and that “he had a strange lust to die violently”. Many Afrikaners already suffered from the Stockholm syndrome, identifying with their oppressors, their torturers and executioners.
“We must say no to hate speech and propaganda, but also to this kind of abject and guilt-ridden angst about one’s own identity. Brink and others have internalised the logic of Afrikaner hatred. Julius Malema is much easier to deal with and less insidious than the self-hating confessions of an André Brink,” Roodt concluded.
