The Congress of South African Trade Unions is concerned at the implications of the South Gauteng High Court's ruling on Friday, 26 March 2010, that the words contained in the song "Kill the Boer; Kill the farmer" are unconstitutional and illegal.
COSATU is adamantly opposed to the use of violence, especially deadly violence, including in the course of political struggles. Killing political opponents is murder and should be punished with the full severity of the law.
COSATU does however agree fully with the ANC's argument that the song is part of the historic fight of the people against apartheid, led by the ANC.
Its words, if interpreted literally could be seen as promoting racial hatred and inciting violence, but such songs evolved in the context of a society where the black majority were disenfranchised at the barrel of a gun by a small white minority and their illegitimate government.
The words reflect the extreme anger of people who were systematically attacked and murdered by the state, yet were denied all basic rights and did not have any constitutional and legal means to fight back.
Yet even then the songs were not aimed at individual white people, although some of them did get caught in the crossfire, and it is true that there were excesses, as in any liberation struggle. The reference to ‘boers' was directed at apartheid as a system and the white farmers as a class, who brutally exploited black workers and were identified as defenders of the apartheid.
The songs which were sung in those days inevitably reflected the armed struggle, led by the ANC against a system which was condemned as a crime against humanity. COSATU fully embraces every effort to forge unity and bury the racial divisions of the past. This does not however mean that we have forgotten the pain and suffering of the past.
The same was true of the songs of other revolutionary struggles. The best known is the French National Anthem, La Marseillaise, whose chorus goes:
To arms citizens
Form you battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows
Just like "Kill the Boer; Kill the farmer", those words can be interpreted as an incitement to murder, yet they are routinely sung at state functions and sporting events. No-one would suggest that it should be banned on the grounds that people might take it literally. It is part of France's national heritage.
Similarly South Africa's struggle heritage and culture is part of our history, and it would be extremely dangerous for the courts to decide what songs South Africans can be allowed to sing and banning those they object to. The appropriateness of songs is something that should be subject to a political discussion and not settled in the courts.
It may be argued that songs by Afrikaners urging people to ‘kill the blacks' should also not be banned. They cannot however be equated. The difference is that they are the product of a small racist minority which was fighting to defend a system which the world had condemned as a crime against humanity.
It is for exactly the same reason that we today refuse to equate the defence violence of the Palestinian people against the imperialist state violence of the Israeli apartheid state. The Palestinians have the same inherent right to fight for their return of their country as black South Africans had to fight for liberation. There can be no discussion about equating the two sides.
We need a wider national debate about how, 16 years into democracy, we remember our years of struggle, especially when we commemorate historic days like 21 March as 16 June or at funerals or memorial services of fallen heroes, when we sing historic songs with similar words from the years of struggle.
COSATU therefore hopes that the ANC's appeal to the Constitutional Court succeeds and that we do not go down the path of cultural censorship. Meanwhile the federation will vigorously oppose any use of violence, assault and murder.
Statement issued by Patrick Craven, COSATU national spokesperson, March 29 2010
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