AN EMOTIONAL Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema detailed the pain that continues to haunt him after witnessing his mother being victimised by a group of apartheid police officers, when he testified in the Equality Court in AfriForum’s “Kill the Boer” case on Thursday.
The combative Malema took offence with lobby group AfriForum’s legal representative, advocate Mark Oppenheimer, for categorising the evidence given earlier by two white individuals who survived farm attacks as “real trauma” compared to the pain Malema had experienced.
The EFF leader said the AfriForum legal counsel was undermining his own lived experiences and that of black South Africans as a whole.
“We are sitting here in court still having to deal with the trauma inflicted upon us by the apartheid system. To then be further subjected to being interrogated by an organisation [AfriForum] that continues to promote racism in this country is really unfair.”
“The trauma of two people is called ‘real trauma’, but the trauma of black parents who had to pick up the dead bodies of their children in Soweto after 1976 is not called real trauma. Their children went to school and never came back; this is not referred to as real trauma. Real trauma is white and that of two families whose testimony was given before this court.
“I am talking about thousands of children who have died, thousands of children who have seen their mothers tortured. I was young when police walked into my mother’s house; she was sleeping, and the policemen took off the blankets she had covered herself with. She was not dressed up as she was sleeping, but [the] men [policemen] took off her blankets.”
Malema said:” I live with that for the rest of my life that some strange men came into my house and took the blankets off my mother to search if she was not a terrorist. That is not real trauma because it is not white.”
He added that while AfriForum was of the belief that the apartheid system had been done away with, the country unfortunately still faced economic apartheid.
“A decolonisation project requires violence. Colonialism is violent; it’s like racism. And the only way to deal with violence is that you must be violent. Therefore there is nothing wrong in engaging in a revolution.
“Revolutions themselves are violent. My lord, when the time comes and the conditions on the ground permit that arms must be taken, we will do so without hesitation. Our forefathers did that, and we will not hesitate to take over from where they left off because they did not achieve that which they fought for. But we are prepared like we are doing now to engage in peaceful talks,” said Malema.
The EFF leader was giving testimony in the civil case brought by AfriForum against him, his party, and EFF Member of Parliament Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, for continuing to sing the song “Kill the Boer”.
The song had been previously ruled to be a form of hate speech.
AfriForum had, throughout the seven days that the trial had been sitting, attempted to demonstrate that the singing of hate-filled songs had serious repercussions, especially for white farmers.
Malema had, however, maintained that the song, particularly “Kill the Boer” was not a command to action, but a chant adopted from the time of the struggle for liberation.
He justified his party’s continued singing of the song in 2022, saying the struggle for economic emancipation was still ongoing and, therefore, the need to sing struggle songs.
Oppenheimer warned that while Malema was giving context and explaining songs ought not to be taken for their literal meaning, but for their symbolism, his own supporters might take his chants literally and engage in violent acts.
An unrepentant Malema, however, warned Oppenheimer that he would eventually be president of the country, and the AfriForum legal counsel should come to terms with this.
Image (Combative. EFF’s Julius Sello Malema at the Equality Court in Johannesburg).
