Disturbingly both the editorials of the City Press (17 April) and the Mail & Guardian (22 April) seem to blame AfriForum for the spectacle we are witnessing in the Equality Court in Johannesburg. The populism and lack of thought of City Press' sentiments are astounding:
"On the one side is a group whose only political currency is the fear and prejudice of its membership and following. To maintain its relevance, this group finds itself hard-pressed to find proof that their members face imminent harm from the state or its leading agents. That is why this group has presented a case that would have been funny had its ignorance not had potentially damaging consequences for the national cohesion project."
Ditto the Mail & Guardian: "... [T]o ban the song is wrong. We don't think it rises to the very high level that the Constitution requires before freedom of speech can be interfered with ... it does not amount to hate speech that is likely to incite imminent violence."
The fact is it has. While it is difficult to make a direct link between the right to free speech and the incitement to cause harm, the brutal murder of over 2000 farmers and family members since 1994, should shock us out of our complacency.
The decline, furthermore, of 300 000 commercial farms to 37 000 currently, shows that we have a very serious problem on our hands, not to speak of the deleterious effects these murders have had on the situation of food security - a problem compounded by a glaringly flawed land restitution process, which as a result has left over 80% of black farmers destitute due to inadequate post-restitution support.
These politically correct newspapers would undoubtedly have argued otherwise had the slogan been: "Kill the kaffir, kill the miner." It is for this reason that the Constitution states precisely that while "everyone has the right to freedom of expression," this right does not extend to "incitement of imminent violence; or advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm."