As a student I was at the Congress of the People, and I joined the ANC the moment I could do so when its ranks were opened to all South Africans. Something I have learned of the culture of the ANC is that each individual member needs the ANC more than the ANC needs him or her; we each need the collective courage, dignity, and humanism of the movement.
If the words one uses cause offence, then they are offensive words. It does not lie in the mouth of the person using the words to define what is and what is not offensive, nor does it lie in the mouth of the person using the words to describe someone who is offended by them as being too sensitive.
Unless we in the ANC accept this, then we cannot legitimately and morally object to the word "kaffir". Hansard shows that as recently as 1955 it was used without objection in Parliament; it is now recognised to be an offensive obscenity because it offends those to whom it is intended to apply, by those who would use it. Though it cannot apply to me, it offends me too because it offends my compatriots.
I am appalled by the shameful response from within the ANC to those who protest against the song "Kill the boer". Sneering contempt for the pain of those whom it offends and stamping on the list of farmers who have been murdered show nothing of the ubuntu which characterises the culture of the ANC of which I am a member and which I need.
The song is most certainly part of our history and must be neither erased from its accounts nor forgotten, but singing it in public in the new South Africa at political rallies and marches today is not the same as preserving it as part of our struggle memorabilia. Furthermore, the names on that list are those of fellow South Africans too, and their deaths are dreadful atrocities that shame our country.
It is irrelevant whether or not one shares all the political views of our compatriots who are as loyal to our Constitution as ourselves but are offended by the song. Sung publicly in an attempt to inspire political activity today in a violent society trying to build peace, it has become triumphalist and theatening to a distinct group of our compatriots -- some of whom are too young to have been part of the times when it was sung defiantly to inspire the anti-apartheid struggle. Whatever the song's symbolic meaning in the past, its words are ugly and menacing today.
It would be impossible to prove any link between the song and the murders, I make no claim that such a link exists, and the point is irrelevant anyway. What is relevant is that ANC members intended their conduct to cause distress by the manner in which they rejected the protests -- showing their hatred when they trampled the names of murdered farmers into the dirt. Whatever the song meant in the past, when people behave like that today what else could the words mean to them if they are not to be taken literally? They must not try to deny their responsibility for the consequences they intended by blaming the victims for their own distress -- a cynical claim of "It never happened, and anyway they deserve it".
Furthermore, the song does not refer to aliens from another planet -- there are now people in the ANC whom come from the very community to whom the song refers. They have identified with our movement. Have those who want to use that song to rally the ANC thought of how some of our own comrades must feel?
We need to remember the struggle and the song is part of that memory, but what is happening is divisive, undignified and contrary to our humane tradition. We become no better than those who defiantly parade the old flag -- we rightly conclude that today they are gloating on what it now symbolises.
The Freedom Charter says that "All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride". That is the character of the South Africa I believe in and want to live in, and I do not recognise or see the ANC that I know in the conduct of callous bullies.
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