Yesterday I noted that Black First Land First’s (BLF) national spokesperson Lindsay Maasdorp continued promoting hate speech on his Twitter through his celebrating of the death of two white farmers who were murdered in their sleep. This comes after my other blog post showing how Maasdorp said he would side with a rapist if the rapist was black and the victim was white.

Unfortunately, this hate speech has not stopped here, however, as BLF president, Andile Mngxitama, returned to Titter after his week long ban to tweet more of it. Initially, Mngxitama was banned after he tweeted that “for every 1 black person killed we shall kill 5 white people,” of which he said included white women, children, and their pets. Mngxitama made his threats in response to white billionaire Johann Rupert’s remarks that he “had friends in the taxi business” who would protect him from Malema and the “red berets.” Mngxitama understood this as a threat against black people by inciting black on black violence and associated Rupert’s remarks with white people in general.

Mngxitama attempted to offset the critical backlash by saying that he said this in self-defense, namely that should Rupert incite black-on-black violence the BLF would retaliate in kind. Most can see through this excuse as it presents a misconception of “self-defense,” as in no rational society would self-defense equate with the revenge killing of innocent human beings who have no reason to have revenge put on their heads in the first place. Nonetheless, Mngxitama’s threat of race based genocide resulted in his ban from Twitter, as per their policy.

Importantly, as I noted in my post concerning Maasdorp, the IEC, South Africa’s election management body which conducts our national and provincial elections, on the 12th of December warned the BLF to refrain from further instances of hate speech. The BLF appears to have willfully disregarded this warning as not only seen in Maasdorp’s own social media behaviour (taking place two days after the IEC’s warning on the 14th of December, and in which he celebrated the death of white farmers with the tagline “1:5” in correspondence with Mngxitama’s statement during his rally) but also in Mngxitama’s return to Twitter. Mngxitama’s tweeted several comments/posts as helpfully collected on The Citizen. It has also come to my knowledge that Mngxitama’s Twitter account has just been banned again (resulting in the party declaring the social medium as “The racist fascist Twitter”).

On his return to Twitter, one of Mngxitama’s first tweets was to remind followers of his statements during the rally that for every black person killed, five whites should be killed (and also referred to whites as land thieves):

Mngxitama then mocked Afrifoum, an organization that protects minority rights, especially those of Afrikaners, who, alongside many others, has laid criminal charges against Mngxitama and the BLF:

Afriforum is correct in the claim that BLF is a small party. But the real issue of concern to Afriforum and to most people (other than the EEF) is that the BLF’s rhetoric, independent of the size of the organization, is immoral, dangerous, and racially divisive. Most people who learn lessons from the sad side of history know what could happen when organizations and charismatic individuals with this mentality obtain authoritarian power. It is this sort of rhetoric that led to the slaughter of the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the tribes in Uganda under Idi Amin. And it doesn’t just happen out of thin air as it is known that genocides generally take the following steps towards actualization:

(i) Divide: first you distinguish between an in-group and out-group while attributing a superior authority or ontological status to the former;

(ii) Demonize: next you accuse the out-group of promoting an injustice, inequality, or threat over against the in-group;

(iii) Destroy: finally, you implore the in-group to redress the injustice, often with a divine or transcendent imprimatur

Mngxitama and the BLF have already applied stages [i] and [ii] to whites. They have blamed whites for almost everything causing pain to blacks in South Africa, thus attempting to wedge a divide between blacks and whites. Whites are the “out-group” and all blacks are taken to be the “in-group.” This is made even clearer on the BLF’s own website which claims that whites are unable to join their movement. This is dangerous because apartheid is recent in the minds of millions of black South Africans and many carry hurt and anger because of it. The BLF attempts to fuel this anger. They have also demonized whites by portraying them as land thieves, settlers, haters of blacks, and protectors of white monopoly capital. Maasdorp recently stated that white existence is a crime. To be white is to be an immoral entity. Frighteningly, that’s two stages already ticked on the way to [iii], to rise up and destroy the enemy. For the BLF, this enemy is the white race and every white person living in the country. Mngxitama’s statement during the rally to kill five whites for every one black is a strategy of destruction. It is not one of self-defense but of retaliation and indiscriminate slaughter. BLF also has an odd concept of a “black god” who they pray punishes whites by causing their destruction and the burning down of their farms.

This is why we should be scared of such rhetoric and why we should act when it is present. History teaches us a lesson but it won’t stop some from repeating it:

The final point I wish to make is that Mngxitama, in the same way as Maasdorp, has shunned the IEC’s warning to avoid further hate speech, even reveling in the IEC’s inability to prevent them while they plan to govern the nation:

The IEC need to be made aware of this, and hopefully South Africa can have elections in which parties aren’t calling for the genocide of South Africans.