The SAHRC may have grounds to examine whether the MP's remarks crossed the line into hate speech.
uMkhonto weSizwe party MP Andile Mngxitama. Picture: Gallo Images/Darren Stewart
uMkhonto weSizwe party MP Andile Mngxitama will, we think, probably have a case to answer if he ends up before the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) on allegations of propagating hate speech.
His awful, but now deleted, social media post was about a farm attack near Ventersdorp last Wednesday.
Farmer Donovan Marx was stabbed, shot in the back and tortured in the attack, with his assailants severing his ears.
“Attacking the ears is symbolic to denote the refusal of land thieves to listen. No land, no peace,” Mngxitama posted on X.
“Farm life is overdetermined by systematic violence. Blacks got killed and fed to pigs,” he added.
DA spokesperson for agriculture Desiree van der Walt said: “There is no place in South Africa for dog whistles like this which can lead to further violence and intimidation.”
Freedom Front Plus MP and chief whip Heloïse Denner said the language used by Mngxitama was “typical of the brutality characterising many farm attacks”.
The attack – and Mngxitama’s response to it – have strengthened the arguments of those who claim South Africa’s white farmers are being persecuted.
And whose words find a receptive audience in the White House in Washington.
He must be called out because this is only deepens our race divide.
