The Congress of South African Trade Unions is concerned at the implications of the South Gauteng High Court's ruling on Friday, 26 March 2010, that the words contained in the song "Kill the Boer; Kill the farmer" are unconstitutional and illegal.
COSATU is adamantly opposed to the use of violence, especially deadly violence, including in the course of political struggles. Killing political opponents is murder and should be punished with the full severity of the law.
COSATU does however agree fully with the ANC's argument that the song is part of the historic fight of the people against apartheid, led by the ANC.
Its words, if interpreted literally could be seen as promoting racial hatred and inciting violence, but such songs evolved in the context of a society where the black majority were disenfranchised at the barrel of a gun by a small white minority and their illegitimate government.
The words reflect the extreme anger of people who were systematically attacked and murdered by the state, yet were denied all basic rights and did not have any constitutional and legal means to fight back.
Yet even then the songs were not aimed at individual white people, although some of them did get caught in the crossfire, and it is true that there were excesses, as in any liberation struggle. The reference to ‘boers' was directed at apartheid as a system and the white farmers as a class, who brutally exploited black workers and were identified as defenders of the apartheid.