Monday, April 5, 2010

Big News in South Africa

Julius Malema (ANC Youth League leader) recently and publicly sang a song called "Shoot the Boer." Boer = Afrikaans for "farmer;" the idea of the "Boer" is still alive and well in both black and white South African mythologies - the resilient Dutch farmer who subdued both the land and its inhabitants in the 1800s (from the white perspective, mostly justifiably; from the black perspective, less so).

Two days ago, Eugene TerreBlanche, the leader of the Afrikaans Resistance Movement (a conservative right-wing white supremacist political party) - and a full-blooded Boer - was, depending on who you ask, assassinated as a direct result of Malema's song/coincidentally murdered/rightfully killed by farmworkers whose wages he had not paid.

South Africa is in a tizzy after all this. If you're interested, check out a good article at NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/africa/05iht-saf.html?ref=africa.

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