South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters party defended its inflammatory leader against President Donald Trump’s criticisms over calls for violence against white people, taking it as a sign of pride.
Trump played a video of communist EFF leader Julius Malema singing the controversial song “Kill the Boer” during an Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Trump repeatedly expressed his disgust with Malema’s singing and statements, asking why he had not been arrested.
The EFF expressed pride in Trump’s denouncements, claiming that Malema had “shaken the corridors of imperialism in Washington.”
“Our Commander in Chief can be considered in the lines of great revolutionaries, as Donald Trump in his illiterate rants has called for his arrest for daring to call for land expropriation without compensation,” a statement from the party reads. “As a result, the EFF is concerned by this call that something must be done to stop the EFF president from chanting a liberation heritage song.”
The party criticized Ramaphosa’s trip to Washington altogether, calling it an “interaction dominated by white privileged men, who have amassed wealth at the expense of African people, who spent a majority of the time expressing their hatred of the EFF and Malema.”
Malema himself chimed in through a post on X, denying Trump’s claims that a genocide against white farmers was taking place in South Africa.
“A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me,” he said. “No significant amount of intelligence evidence has been produced about white genocide. We will not agree to compromise our political principles on land expropriation without compensation for political expediency.”
The EFF also defended Malema’s singing of the “Kill the Boer” song, the uncomplicated lyrics of which consist almost entirely of repeated stanzas urging the killing of white South Africans and white farmers.
“This liberation chant was considered as part of African heritage by the Equality Court, which also said the song could not be interpreted literally,” the EFF said. “The Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court of South Africa then ratified this decision.”
“Kill the Boer” was first sung in the final decade of apartheid South Africa, when the country was rapidly descending into a racial civil war, according to the Daily Maverick. Its usage declined with the peaceful fall of apartheid.
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In 2010, Malema, then the African National Congress Youth League leader, began singing the song at rallies, at a time when violence against white farmers was reaching historic highs. Afrikaner lobby group Afriforum urged the ANC to cease use of the slogan, bringing them a petition along with a list of 1,600 white victims of recent farm attacks. The ANCYL responded by taking the list and trampling on it.
A hate speech case in 2010 went to the country’s high court, where the song was banned. The ban was overturned in 2022. The singing of the song is still highly controversial in South Africa today and viewed as inflammatory toward white South Africans.