EFF statement on the SAHRC’s categorizing of remarks by Julius Malema as hate speech and incitement of violence
9 November 2022
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has noted the media advisory issued by the South African Human Rights Commission, in which they detail various comments made by the Commander in Chief and President of the EFF, Julius Malema at the EFF Western Cape Yd Provincial Peoples' Assembly. The Commission, incorrectly and ignorantly labels these comments as incitements to violence and hate speech, revealing a failure of appreciating political commentary in its metaphorical, literary and historical sense.
Firstly, any commentary taken out of its context, can be manipulated and distorted, which is the trap the Human Rights Commission has fallen into, at the altar of the egos and fragility of whiteness.
If anyone at the commission had taken an opportunity to engage on literature which is widely publicised and part of curricula in institutions of higher learning, they would be able to place the comments by the Commander in Chief in their literary and academic context. Frantz Fanon in his seminal text, The Wretched of the Earth reflects correctly on the necessity of violence towards a violent system. Fanon in the chapter Conceming Violence speaks lucidly on the necessity of violence in order to destroy the violent systems of white supremacy and colonialism. Fanon writes that "violence ... frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect'.
When the Commander in Chief says that violence can only be ended by violence and by any means necessary, he operates correctly within the logic that the system of white-supremacy, the anti-blackness witnessed in Brackenfell where white people assaulted peaceful protesters and the monopoly of wealth by a white minority at the expense of a black majority, is violence.