‘Kill the Boer, kill the farmer.’ These provocative words form part of a song that black South Africans used to sing during the Struggle against Apartheid. The word for farmer in Afrikaans, the language of the Afrikaner people, is boer. The Afrikaners trace their heritage to the Dutch that colonised a small portion of the southwestern Cape in 1652.
After the British invaded South Africa during the Napoleonic Wars, many Dutch speaking South Africans decided to move to the interior of the country in the 1830’s, similar to the Western expansion in America.
The Afrikaners established their own Republics after conquering vast swathes of land from the indigenous people’s. Unfortunately these land were abundant in both diamonds and gold, something the British were rather keen to exploit.
SCORCHED EARTH: This dynamic led to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1901. It is almost inconceivable to think that the British Army not only used Scorched Earth tactics to defeat the Boer warriors, but also captured the Boer women and children and kept them in concentration camps. 27 000 Afrikaner women and children died in the camps. The British crushed the Afrikaners and took control of their land, and more importantly, the mines.
Many Afrikaners vowed to fight to the end, the Bittereinders, but others understood that it would result in the complete destruction of the Afrikaner people if they continued. The might of the British Empire was just too overwhelming to withstand. Particularly because they did not play fair, they played to win, at all costs.
Although the Union of South Africa fought on the side of the Allies during both World Wars, a rather large group of Afrikaners viewed this as a betrayal. They wanted the Union either to remain neutral, or to fight on the side of the Germans, and later, the Nazis.
The pain caused by Britain during the Anglo/Boer War, was still deep and very raw. It was even more painful because it was done under a veneer of civility and pompous entitlement. The Dutch which had by this time become the Afrikaners, were perceived as being uncivilised brutes.
APARTHEID: This antagonism between White English speaking, and White Afrikaans speaking South Africans, came to a boil in 1948. The National Party, a right wing Afrikaner political movement unexpectedly won the elections. This happened almost simultaneously as Israel declared an independent Jewish State in 1948. The two countries formed a close bond due to their similar predicaments, how does a minority rule over a majority? Answer – with brutality, that’s how.
The National Party waisted no time In formalising Apartheid and segregation, using every aspect of the State apparatus to subjugate and disempower the black majority. Africans had chosen to resist peacefully until the Sharpeville Massacre of 21 March, 1960. 69 protesters were killed and hundreds more injured, many of the dead being children.
This atrocity in turn led to a declaration of armed resistance by Nelson Mandela and other members of the ANC. Mandela and scores of Freedom Fighters were arrested in the early 1960’s and imprisoned by the Regime. Mandela spent 27 years in jail and was only released in 1990, a huge step towards reconciliation.
SHOOT THE BREEZE: The Struggle song, shoot the Boer, shoot the Farmer, was born out of this period of extreme oppression by the Apartheid Government. It was a war chant. Thousands of Africans were kidnapped and tortured. Thousand were killed and tens of millions brutally subjugated.
Unfortunately this chant has been resurrected by a radical black politician called Julius Malema. Julius was the youth leader of the ruling African National Congress until he was expelled from the party in 2011. He then created the EFF, Economic Freedom Fighters, in 2012 and has become more and more extreme in his views.
He was initially banned from singing the song, and then the Constitutional Court ruled in 2022 that it was protected under free speech and is part of the historical Struggle against Apartheid. They ruled that it was not an incitement to violence, but merely a metaphor.
Julius Malema decided that it was a fantastic idea to sing the chant on 21 March, 2025, Human Rights Day, in South Africa. Even more troubling is the fact that he chose to do so in Sharpeville, the place of the massacre of 1960.
MAKE SOUTH AFRICA GREAT AGAIN: This is all playing out against the backdrop of Trump and Musk accusing South Africa of committing genocide against the White Afrikaner farmers. The ANC ruling party recently signed into law a bill that would allow them to confiscate land without compensation. It is this new law that has created much unease amongst the Afrikaners.
The Law is rather strict and cannot just be used to confiscate private property, but as can be gleaned from American politics, laws can be bent, twisted, and broken. If a bad faith actor is in charge, everything can change in a flash. Land remains a lighting rod issue in modern day South Africa and it doesn’t take much to disturb the finely balanced dynamic of national unity and race relations.
White people can complain about a hypothetical situation that could emerge in the future. Black people are dealing with the present which has been influenced by the past. Most black South Africans do not own any land, that’s a fact. The longer it takes to address this issue, the more likely conflict between the haves and have nots will become.
Yes white people have a lot to answer for, but black supremacy is not the solution. South Africa is a multicultural democracy, home to all of its people, regardless of race, religion or culture. I am a White Afrikaner and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable when Julius Malema sings this inflammatory chant. We experienced some intense riots in July 2021 when our former president, Jacob Zuma, was jailed for refusing to comply with the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.
STATE CAPTURE: And now we encounter the sting in the tale. Both Zuma and Malema have been accused of serious corruption, I mean State Capture level of corruption. When Zuma was at his most vulnerable due to all of the stories of epic mismanagement, he hired a British firm based in London to come up with a PR strategy to counter the accusations. Guess what was their angle, blame it on White Monopoly Capital.
Whenever any corruption was highlighted, it was treated as fake news and part of an orchestrated campaign to smear the politicians. Zuma was eventually removed as President, but then formed a break away political party in 2024 called MK, named after the military wing of the ANC during the Struggle against Apartheid.
The Party did exceptionally well in the 2024 election, and together with the EFF, account for almost 25% of seats in the National Assembly.
When all of this is taken into consideration, Elon Musk and Donald Trump can use these examples to bolster their own lies about South African farmers being murdered. Afrikaners are being murdered, but not at a higher rate than black South Africans. In fact, life is way more dangerous for a black South African than it is for a white one, whether they are English or Afrikaans speaking.
This is really the same issue as addressed in an earlier post about masculine and feminine toxicity. White supremacy is a major problem, but so is black supremacy. It also applies to Muslims that hate Jews and Jews that hate Muslims.
One group is never entirely innocent, and neither are they entirely guilty. In order to evolve as a society, all of these supremacies need to be called out as extremism. Otherwise they will just feed the insatiable appetites of the most radical and extreme people in society. MALEMA versus MUSK.
Images – Julius Malema EFF. Sharpeville Massacre. Afrikaners protesting outside the US Embassy in Pretoria South Africa. Pete Hegseth.
Mar 30, 2025 7:25:51 pm
