ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said no member of the ANC would be allowed to sing the controversial struggle song “Kill the Boer”, despite a Constitutional Court ruling that found the song does not constitute hate speech.
Addressing the media after the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on Wednesday, Mbalula said the party had done enough to defend its legacy and should not continue engaging in distractions aimed at distorting its historical role.
“No member of the ANC today will be allowed to sing Kill the Boer. Simple as that. Even if the Constitutional Court said you can sing, why should we sing Kill the Boer in a democratic dispensation?” Mbalula said.
He explained that the song was originally sung in the context of the liberation struggle, when ANC combatants were infiltrating the country from frontline states and fighting against apartheid-era military formations.
“We sang the song because we were fighting the commandos when we infiltrated the country from the poor.
”They deployed the poor’s commandos to kill the guerrillas as we infiltrate the country. From Angola and in the frontline states, we sang kill the boer, kill the farmer, in order to infiltrate the country and come inside and fight,” he said.
Mbalula also dismissed claims made in a recent podcast that ANC members were involved in drug dealing while in exile. He described such allegations as a direct insult to the legacy of the liberation struggle.
“I mean, we’re not fighting. Clowns openly in these podcasts insult our struggle and the memory of brave men and women of our struggle. And insult them, that no, we were in exile selling drugs.
”How can you sell drugs in Angola? In the bush, where we’re training alongside FAPLA and the Cubans to defeat the poor in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. We’ve got graves and soldiers who never came back home and died. We rebury them every day,” he said.
He further rejected as false the claims that the ANC received funding from Iran or supplied weapons to Russia in its war with Ukraine.
“We didn’t get money from Iran. Another clown again says no, ANC got money from Iran and they keep repeating this lie. We didn’t get any money from Iran,” Mbalula said. “Even the CIA, I’m sure they can tell you, they regard themselves as the best intelligence outfit, can tell you that it’s not true that the ANC got money from Iran.”
On South Africa’s diplomatic posture, Mbalula defended President Cyril Ramaphosa’s balanced approach to the war in Ukraine, saying the President personally engaged with both sides of the conflict.
“Our president travelled 10 hours on a train to meet the president of Ukraine, and advanced to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin,” Mbalula said.
“And then somebody from the United States, her, with a bow tie, made a statement briefly that now we supply arms. And then we established a commission of inquiry.”
He said the inquiry found no evidence of arms supplied to Russia, but opposition parties like the DA rejected the findings, claiming it compromised national security. He accused the DA of actively working against South Africa’s interests by lobbying for punitive trade measures.
“They advocate for sanctions against our country disguised as tariffs to hit us,” Mbalula said. “And then these people, they agree with them. Where is national interest, and where do we draw the line?”
He questioned how the DA could justify lobbying foreign governments to take actions that would harm South Africa’s economy, especially when millions of citizens faced unemployment and poverty.
“The DA, where do they draw the line in terms of partisan interest and national interest? They hate this country. They go to America, go and tell Donald Trump what he wants to hear, and all of that, and come back to this country again.
”Hurt our economy. When our people are unemployed, we no longer trade with the biggest markets like the United States, and all of that. They will be coming back and blaming us.”
Mbalula said the ANC had moved swiftly after the 2024 election to form a government of national unity and prove its commitment to democracy.
“They said to the United States we must be hit with sanctions as politicians of the ANC, like Zimbabwe. What did we do? We are not a dictatorship.
”We have just formed a government of national unity,” he said. “In less than 14 days, we formed a government of national unity. Not persuaded by anyone in the world, independently here in this country.”
Mbalula said South Africa must assert its sovereignty and build trade relationships based on mutual respect, not foreign pressure.
“We are not a branch of the United States. We are a country, full country, state, president, and everything else. So, we have to be dealing with these matters with that clear understanding,” he said.
He insisted the ANC has “worked very hard to rebut the lies of the United States of America” and urged the country to focus on building international trade ties in new markets.
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