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The Language of KILLING

Paul Trewhela on the origins of a very dangerous political discourse

Can any adult doubt from where the language of KILLING comes, in the present political climate in South Africa ?

First, the president of the African National Congress Youth League, Julius Malema, issued his notorious exhortation to the pogrom mob, to "KILL for Zuma".

Next, Malema's pogrom mob menaces a legal and peaceful political meeting with the blood-curdling cries of "KILL Lekota!" and "KILL Shilowa!" (Was anyone arrested and charged with incitement to murder? Is the moon made of green cheese? Already the Constitution is breached with impunity under the very noses of the police, in a manner that undoes every single undertaking by the ANC in its constitutional negotiations of 1990-1994.)

It is worth considering another point. Can anyone remember the ANC ever having previously issued such a barbarous call as "KILL for Luthuli!", or "KILL for Mandela!", or "KILL for Tambo!", or "KILL for Mbeki!"? Since when in the history of the ANC was the name of a single individual elevated into a political slogan in such a barbarous fashion, with its toxic recollections of Hitler's Fuhrerprinzip (principle of The Leader) or of Stalin, the great Vozhd (meaning "leader" in Russian, as South Africa's "Soviet graduates" know only too well)?

Does anyone doubt that the founders of the ANC - Pixley ka Izaka Seme, Sol Plaatje, the Reverend John Langalibalele Dube, Thomas Mapikela, Paramount Chief Montsioa of the Barolong, the Reverend Mqoboli, the Reverend HR Ncayiya, the Reverend Walter Rubusana, Saul Msane and others - would shudder in their graves, at the idea that such a grotesque and potentially murderous cult of personality could ever have come to attend the organisation they founded? One can only say: shame! Shame on the head of the individual, and individuals, who have introduced such a brutal, degrading concept into the language of political discourse in South Africa, a travesty of the sentiments of a Nelson Mandela in his "I will still be moved" and "I am prepared to die" speeches from the dock.

And now this gentleman has the temerity and dishonesty to complain that it is his political opponents who risk "breeding a monster that will take our country to civil war" (read the speech here). Yes, Mr Malema, you remember it was the Poles who started the Second World War, don't you, because of their bad manners and their lack of respect towards Mr Adolf Hitler in September 1939, and it was the Jews who were the authors of their own misfortune, because...because....

But, then...it has always been easy for bullies to find excuses for their violence. Prime Minister Verwoerd and State Presidents Vorster and Botha were quite good at it too. Or is Mr Malema too young to remember?

It would be hard to find duplicity worse confounded in this gross, contemporary language of KILLING, but there really is worse to come. Consider this comment, tucked away in the final paragraph of the article, "Malema warns of civil war", from this week's Times. This article quotes verbatim the words of the current Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, the former Speaker of the National Assembly and current national chairperson of the ANC, in fact a party hack of the dominant Zuma faction, Ms Baleka Mbete.

This report, by responsible journalists, states: "ANC chairwoman Baleka Mbete told thousands of ANC supporters in Mpumalanga that Lekota and Shilowa were ‘not worth killing'."

"Not worth KILLING?" Not WORTH killing?

This immediately suggests: who exactly is it, then, that the Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa actually does consider IS worth KILLING?

What kind of thinking does this reveal, if the Deputy President of the country (who simultaneously is national chairperson of the dominant ruling party) goes around the country talking about who is and who is not "worth KILLING"?

What kind of Mafia language is this at the head of state?

And what kind of state is it, which has the language of criminals in its Deputy Presidency?

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