ANTI-APARTHEID SONG THAT ANGERS MUSK

In the last few days, tech billionaire Elon Musk has shared multiple posts accusing South African politician Julius Malema of inciting gen*cide against White people. The incident comes amid tension between the US and South Africa over a newly adopted land-reform law. On Sunday, the Trump ally even called for Malema to be declared an 'international criminal' and sanctioned.

It’s not the first time Musk has taken a swipe at the pan-African opposition figure. In 2023, he claimed the EFF party leader’s chanting of an apartheid-era song - K*ll the Boer - amounted to 'openly pushing for genocide of White people' in South Africa.

However, like so many of Musk's claims, the accusation was incorrect. In 2022, South Africa's High Court ruled that the song, which emerged during the struggle against apartheid, did not amount to hate speech or call for gen*cide.

The term 'Boer' means farmer in Afrikaans, the language spoken by South Africans of Dutch descent. However, in the South African context, it loosely refers to all White people who are of Dutch origin, the group that dominated the apartheid-era government.

So when freedom fighters sang about 'shooting the Boer,' they were not talking about shooting individual Boers but about bringing down the racist, oppressive system of apartheid.

It hardly seems credible that a man who has sent people into space can fail to understand this, so Musk must know that Malema is not asking his supporters to k*ll White people. But his performative anger is understandable: as a beneficiary of apartheid-era policies, Musk won't like a song that energises young people to break the system that paved the way for him to become the world's richest man.