Judge Collin Lamont has ruled in Johannesburg’s High Court that the song Dubil’ibhunu, also known as Shoot the Boer, used during the anti-apartheid era in South Africa, and adopted by the ANC Youth League following the murder of Chris Hani in 1993, is hate speech and that “no justification exists allowing the words to be sung … the words of one person inciting others – that is how a genocide can start”; he condemned the lyrics as “derogatory, dehumanising,” Afrikaaner rights group Afriforum had complained about ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema singing the song at political rallies last year. However an ANC spokesman has said that the ANC viewed “this judgment as an attempt to rewrite South African history. This ruling flies against the need to accept our past and to preserve our heritage.” The song has a long history of causing controversy, perhaps most notably recently when Bono, during a tour of South Africa appeared to endorse the song, comparing it to Irish rebel songs – as reported in an earlier news item. The lyrics are certainly strident and unambiguous – starting

Ayasab’ amagwala (the cowards are scared)

dubula dubula (shoot shoot)
ayeah 
dubula dubula (shoot shoot )

ayasab ‘a magwala (the cowards are scared)

dubula dubula (shoot shoot)

awu yoh 
dubula dubula (shoot shoot)

aw dubul’ibhunu (shoot the Boer)

dubula dubula (shoot shoot)

aw dubul’ibhunu (shoot the Boer)

A few days ago Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr caused a storm of criticism and controversy in South Africa by publishing the lyrics of a song – The song, Ons sal dit oorleef (We will survive it) – which refers to black people using the highly offensive term “kaffir”. Hofmeyr reportedly dedicated the song to Eugene Terre’Blanche, the white supremacist founder of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, who was murdered on his farm last year. One verse, translated from Afrikaans by the Times of South Africa, reads:

My heart beats like a beetle,where it breaks for my people, before the khaki [British soldiers in the Boer War] cannon or the kaffir’s dagger. It doesn’t matter any more where we find ourselves, we will survive it.”

The lyrics were condemned by South Africa’s Institute for Race Relations saying “The comments are racist in the worst traditions of racial nationalism. If Hofmeyr thinks he can fight racism with racism, he is as foolish as he is racist.

Hofmeyr said that he wrote the song in retaliation for the singing of Shoot the Boer (see Giving Voice Workshops earlier news item by members of the governing African National Congress (ANC).

However it has now been reported in the Beeld that Hofmeyr has agreed to drop the word from the lyrics.