Johannesburg - The looming legal scrap between the self-styled right-wing group Front National and two Afrikaner musicians has thrust into the spotlight the “class issue” among Afrikaans-speaking people, says political and cultural commentator Professor Pitika Ntuli.
The right-wing group said it was irked by video footage doing the rounds on YouTube produced by artist Johan Pienaar, depicting Afrikaners as “useless people”.
In the video showing images of protesters in April during the defacing of the statues of Cecil John Rhodes and Paul Kruger in Cape Town and Pretoria, Pienaar uses Anton Goosen’s Die Wit K*****s Van Afrika. The song was first released in 1996.
Front National spokesman Francois Cloete said there had been an instruction issued to their lawyer to initiate the legal action by bringing charges relating to hate speech against the video’s creators. It is unclear if Pienaar collaborated with Goosen to produce the video.
Cloete said the white Afrikaans-speaking community the organisation was representing had taken offence because of the way they had been projected in the video.
“They seem to imply that white people are non-believers and are downgrading our humanity. They say we are useless people,” he said.
He said the organisation was moved to take the matter to the Equality Court because of the precedent set by the court by outlawing the use of the word “k****r”.
Cloete said the artists ridiculed what the organisation stood for.
Part of the video shows protesters in T-shirts bearing the Freedom Front Plus logo and brandishing placards with anti-ANC messages in both Afrikaans and English.
The organisation said the video had been manipulated in some places and shows Front National officials and other people attending rallies on Church Square in Pretoria and Adderley Street in Cape Town on April 8 in protest against the vandalism of national heritage resources. Cloete said the organisation also took umbrage because the video showed Steve Hofmeyr, Sunette Bridges and Dan Roodt appearing in the clip in the same context as the convicted criminal Johan Kotze, also known as the Modimolle Monster.
He said members of the public who wanted to be party to the legal action could approach the magistrate’s courts in Pretoria and Cape Town, where the Equality Court was located.
“Any person who can identify himself or herself as being present on Church Square or in Adderley Street on the day has the right to register a complaint,” said Cloete.
Ntuli said the clash between the two parties highlighted the class issue among Afrikaners.
He said the role of the artist in this case might have been misconstrued. “The role of the artist is to provoke debate in the society; to look at something from a different perspective,” he said.
Advocate Johan Kruger of the Centre for Constitutional Rights said although he was not familiar with the details of the case, or seen the video, it was important for people to respect each other’s culture and not use derogatory language.
Efforts to contact Pienaar and Goosen were fruitless.
Pretoria News