On Could 25, Julius Malema, the firebrand chief of South Africa’s Financial Freedom Fighters (EFF), closed his marketing campaign rally on the Mminara Sports activities Floor in Kwakwatsi, Free State, as he typically does: by singing his favorite anti-apartheid battle anthem, “Dubul’ ibhunu”. Sung in Xhosa, the track interprets to “Kill the Boer” or “Kill the farmer” and has lengthy sparked controversy in South Africa and overseas. In latest weeks, the controversy has flared up as soon as once more.
Simply 4 days earlier, on Could 21, throughout a tense assembly on the White Home with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, United States President Donald Trump performed a video of Malema and his supporters chanting the track. He claimed it was proof of a “white genocide” in South Africa and demanded Ramaphosa clarify “that man’s” conduct.
But Malema has been singing this track publicly since 2010. There isn’t a white genocide occurring in South Africa. In truth, in August 2022, the nation’s Equality Courtroom dominated that the track doesn’t represent hate speech. By performing it once more in Kwakwatsi, Malema was clearly seizing a possibility to capitalise on Trump’s deceptive allegations and the worldwide media consideration they introduced.
The disproportionate consideration granted to Malema by Trump and his ally Elon Musk obscures a deeper, extra pressing actuality: thousands and thousands of Black South Africans, like many throughout the continent, are crying out for significant socioeconomic change and long-overdue justice for the enduring legacies of colonialism and apartheid.
They’re calling for a contemporary revolution.
Nothing illustrates this greater than the EFF’s platform. Its insurance policies centre on financial transformation, together with land expropriation with out compensation and the nationalisation of mines. The occasion embraces Black nationalism and pan-Africanism, helps Russia in its standoff with NATO, and positions itself in opposition to perceived Western dominance.
Whereas the EFF’s agenda is daring and Afrocentric, it’s hardly new. Many years earlier than the EFF’s founding on July 26, 2013, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), a radical anti-apartheid motion, championed most of the similar beliefs.
Based on April 6, 1959, by a bunch that break up from the African Nationwide Congress (ANC), the PAC was led by Robert Sobukwe, an mental, pan-Africanist, and activist. On the occasion’s launch, Sobukwe famously mentioned, “The Africanists take the view that there’s just one race to which all of us belong, and that’s the human race.”
The PAC advocated for the return of land to Indigenous Africans, asserting that it had been unjustly seized by white settlers. This view – that land dispossession lies on the coronary heart of South Africa’s historic injustice – has solely not too long ago begun to be addressed by the ANC by way of the Expropriation Act 13 of 2024, signed into regulation by Ramaphosa on February 23.
South African historical past is wealthy with visions for African renewal. Sobukwe’s philosophy laid the groundwork for what is usually mischaracterised at present as “radical financial transformation”. Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Motion within the Seventies instilled delight and self-determination. Within the late Nineties, President Thabo Mbeki championed the African Renaissance – a cultural, scientific, and financial revival aimed toward decolonising African minds and establishments.
Malema shouldn’t be a theoretical pioneer, however he’s a potent political vessel for the concepts lengthy espoused by Sobukwe, Biko, and Mbeki.
Very like elsewhere on the continent, South Africans are revisiting the query of land. It alerts a broader resurgence of postcolonial ideology.
In 1969, Muammar Gaddafi offered a robust instance. He nationalised Libya’s Western-owned oil firms to uplift the impoverished. Over a decade, Gaddafi offered free schooling, healthcare, and subsidised housing, giving Libyans Africa’s highest per capita earnings.
In 2000, Zimbabwe launched its land reform programme to reclaim land taken throughout colonial rule. In newer examples, Burkina Faso nationalised the Boungou and Wahgnion gold mines in August 2024 and plans to take over extra. Mali reclaimed the Yatela mine in October. In December 2024, Niger seized management of the Somair uranium mine, beforehand run by French nuclear big Orano.
Throughout Western and Southern Africa, it’s clear: the legacy of colonialism nonetheless calls for redress. South Africa stays the world’s most unequal nation. Its Gini coefficient, which measures earnings inequality, constantly ranks among the many highest. Many years after apartheid’s fall, systemic racial inequality persists, sustained by disparities in schooling, employment, and financial entry.
Trump’s astonishing choice on February 7 to sanction South Africa – partly over the Expropriation Act – reveals the West’s historic amnesia and indifference. Many Black South Africans are determined to maneuver past the previous, however are frequently thwarted by a refusal to appropriate entrenched inequality.
Paradoxically, Trump’s intervention might serve to galvanise African governments. His public posturing might attraction to his home base, however his tone-deafness will solely deepen anti-US sentiment amongst South Africans.
Anti-Western feeling is already rising throughout the continent, fuelled by historic grievances, neocolonial insurance policies, and the emergence of latest world powers like Russia and China. This disillusionment is seen within the rejection of Western-backed establishments and a rising urge for food for various partnerships.
As a substitute of making an attempt to disgrace Ramaphosa on the world stage, Trump would do higher to assist equitable and lawful reforms. Obsessing over Malema is futile – he’s merely the voice of a technology grappling with financial ache and historic betrayal.
“Dubul’ ibhunu” resonates amongst components of South Africa’s Black inhabitants not as a result of they’re bloodthirsty, however as a result of the guarantees of liberation stay unfulfilled.
Trump would do properly to grasp this: the revolution in Africa shouldn’t be over.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.