EFF leader Julius Malema’s trademark song is “Shoot the Boer, Shoot the farmer”, which he sings at political rallies.
Afrikaner lobby groups have tried to get the song banned, saying it was highly inflammatory and amounted to hate speech.
However, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that Malema is within his rights to sing the lyrics – first popularised during the anti-apartheid struggle – at political rallies.
The court ruled that a “reasonably well-informed person” would understand that when “protest songs are sung, even by politicians, the words are not meant to be understood literally, nor is the gesture of shooting to be understood as a call to arms or violence”.
Instead, the song was a “provocative way” of advancing the EFF’s political agenda – which was to end “land and economic injustice”.
Lobby group AfriForum filed an appeal against the ruling, but South Africa’s highest court refused to hear the case, saying it had little chance of succeeding.
In 2023, South Africa’s former President Thabo Mbeki urged Malema to stop singing the song, saying it was no longer politically relevant as the anti-apartheid struggle was over.
The ANC says it no longer sings it, but it cannot “prescribe to other political parties what they must sing”.