Red rag: Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema uses the chant to mask that the party has no coherent vision for undoing injustice, (File photo)
South Africa is at one of its crossroads. Our freedom requires leadership rooted in dignity, human rights and justice. Yet we find ourselves periodically dragged into a political theatre that gutters our national conversation and distracts us from the urgent work of rebuilding a fractured society.
The recent iteration of Julius Malema’s chant, “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer,” is politically bankrupt. It diminishes the very ethos upon which our democracy rests. It favours spectacle. It plays directly into the hands of those who would love to see South Africa fail.
Let’s be clear: the legacy of apartheid is not forgotten or forgiven. White supremacy and its structural tentacles continue to shape land ownership, economic exclusion and racialised opportunity in our society. But to respond to that pain with rhetorical violence is not revolutionary — it is reactionary. It neither dismantles structures of injustice nor proposes a coherent vision for the poor, the landless, the working class and the marginalised.
What Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) claim as “struggle theatre” is, in fact, a performance of the politics of resentment. It uses the language of liberation to mask the absence of programmatic, rational and ethical politics. It replaces vision with vitriol. And in doing so, it betrays the foundational commitments of our Constitution — commitments to dignity, equality and freedom for all who live in this land.
We are not under the heel of an apartheid regime. We live in a constitutional democracy, imperfect and bruised but grounded in human rights, accountability and civic participation. That is the terrain upon which we must wage our political battles. In this terrain, we do not raise our fists to call for death, especially not of any group or identity. Instead, we raise our voices for life — for a life of dignity, security and hope.
To echo the hate of white supremacists with the hate of revolutionary bravado is to become the mirror image of those we critique. We must not fall for their game. Supremacy — whether white or any other form — is a sickness of the soul, a desperation for domination when justice seems too difficult to pursue. But here’s the truth: white supremacists do not speak for the majority of white South Africans. They are loud, but they are marginal. Allowing their political bluster to dominate our national agenda means handing them the relevance they do not deserve.
In choosing the chant of death, the EFF closes the doors to inclusive dialogue, shared struggle and transformative alliances.
It alienates young people — black and white — who are searching for a politics that heals, that builds, that inspires.
Perhaps most tragically, it robs people with low incomes of a politics that should be focused on building schools, reforming land, creating jobs and ensuring safety, not stirring division for clicks and headlines.
We need a politics of justice that is strategic, not theatrical, targets real issues — hunger, homelessness, under-education, landlessness — and marshals the virtuous society into collective action. We need leaders who offer more than anger — leaders who show how to build housing, transform the economy, green our townships and educate the youth in ways that prepare them for global citizenship and ethical leadership.
We also need principled and strategic South African democratic politics that can forge alliances among the historically oppressed and all who believe in justice. This includes people of every race, background and faith who stand against white supremacy, against Zionist occupation and genocide in Palestine, against the erosion of public institutions and the exploitation of workers and the environment.
To speak against Malema’s chant is not to stand with racists. It is to stand with the Constitution. It is to stand with Steve Biko, who taught us that the struggle is not merely against oppression but for restoring black dignity and consciousness. It is to stand with Nelson Mandela, who taught us that political leadership must rise above vengeance to become a bridge to a just future. And it is to stand with the people — especially the poor, who have no use for rhetorical war games but hunger instead for policies that transform their lives.
Let us not confuse volume for vision or theatre for strategy. Let us reject the gutter politics that divides and distracts. Instead, let us recommit to building a just, inclusive and sustainable South Africa where no farmer is killed, no worker is exploited and no child goes to bed hungry.
It is time to rise above. We must build a society where chants are replaced with choices, and politics is not a battleground of egos but a platform for hope.
Aslam Fataar is a research professor in higher education at the department of education policy studies at Stellenbosch University.
