Lulu Xingwana's comments causes furious reaction

The FF Plus will be raising minister Lulu Xingwana's hate speech comments about Afrikaners and Calvinists in Parliament and submit a complaint to the Human Rights Commission. I will also be raising this issue in Cabinet as an example of irresponsible comments which does not make any contribution toward better relations in South Africa.

Minister Xingwana said in Australia in reaction to the Oscar Pistorius court case:

"Young Afrikaner men are brought up in the Calvinist religion believing that they own a woman, they own a child, they own everything and therefore they can take that life because they own it. We also have cultural differences as well in our own communities where we have women who are forced into marriage and we are dealing with all those issues"

The minister's comments are a crude generalisation and factually wrong at that. Murder figures prove her wrong. The comments say more about the ministers own twisted view of Afrikaners than of real Calvinism which preaches the exact opposite. Apart from this, Oscar Pistorius' first language is English and there is no indication that he was raised "strictly Calvinist".

If the same generalisations had been made about young black men, who per capita commit the most murders in South Africa, the minister would have been the first to have screamed racism and unfair generalisations.

Minister Xingwana's inciting and divisive comments creates the impression that she is trying to take place of Malema, just after we succeeded in having him removed from the public debate.

Statement issued by Dr. Pieter Mulder, FF Plus Leader and deputy minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, February 27 2013

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