AfriForum ‘spending money’ so ‘white murderers’ can walk free – BLF

Black First Land First (BLF) attempted to clarify a recent tweet from their spokesperson, Lindsay Maasdorp, which caused widespread outrage and has led to the party once again being taken to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), at a press conference on Tuesday.

BLF leader Andile Mngxitama partially defended his spokesperson, partially distanced himself from his tweet, and ended off by bringing up AfriForum’s recent announcement that it will be funding the appeal of the two Coligny men convicted of murder.

Maasdorp tweeted, then deleted, an expression of support for a Facebook post in which Siyanda Gumede said he “doesn’t have a heart” to feel sorry for those who died after the collapse of a walkway at Hoërskool Driehoek in Vanderbijl park last week, under the assumption that they were white. The death of three children would eliminate “3 future problems”, Gumede added, in a post that caused widespread outrage.

The death toll was three at the time, but has since risen to four.

Maasdorp tweeted that Gumede was “correct”, saying the incident showed “God is responding”.

“Why should we frown on the ancestors’ petitions to punish the land thieves including their offspring,” he added.

He further told The Citizen that he would “mourn” the deaths of the victims if they turned out to be black but “celebrate” them if they were white.

The tweet led to the DA launching a petition to stop the party contesting the 2019 elections; Cope charging BLF with “racist hate speech”; the SAHRC saying they’d received 80 complaints, were seeking relief from the Equality Court, and were “appalled”; and AfriForum-affiliated union Solidarity proclaiming the party had reached a “new low”.

The conference to address the tweet, however, went largely unnoticed, with most major media houses, The Citizen included, unrepresented. Jacaranda FM appears to be the only publication who covered it at the time.

READ MORE: BLF ‘celebrates’ Hoërskool Driehoek tragedy as ‘punishment’ from ‘ancestors’ and ‘God’

They reported that Mngxitama said the party wouldn’t be disciplining Maasdorp for the tweet, and instead said the tweet was taken out of context and called for a “forum” in which South Africans could discuss the “divisions in South African society”.

The party released several tweets which included videos of Mngxitama clarifying BLF’s position.

Mngxitama appeared to contradict Maasdorp, saying “Black First Land First does not celebrate the death of learners in Driehoek school”.

“Black First Land First is against all violence,” he added. But, he said, “violence has been going on since 1652 with the arrival of white people in South Africa.”

The Driehoek tragedy is “something in a normal society all of us without any hesitation should find tragic and sad,” Mngxitama said. “But South Africa is not a normal society. South Africa is a country where black and white are separated by the great sea of land dispossession by white people.

“South Africa is divided by white arrogance and black dispossession, black poverty and black hopelessness, all this created by white people.

“We are not going to pretend that South Africa is a country where all of us live together in peace and harmony and justice, we remain a divided country and this division was caused by white people who have put us in this condition we find ourselves in.”

He also said the context of the tweet was that “Comrade Lindsay” was responding to a debate on Gumede’s post and “did not jump and start writing a tweet”, claiming “the media doesn’t say this”.

READ MORE: Racial tensions high in Coligny amid ‘sunflower case’ sentencing

The Citizen did indeed report that Maasdorp was reacting to Gumede’s post.

“Under normal circumstances, we should be condemning such a statement outright by Gumede,” said Mngxitama. “But,” he asked, “Would such a condemnation not be an erasure of the bitter history we live through today?

“If you say to Gumede you are wrong to have no sympathy, you are immediately saying he must erase the pain of blackness that we live through as a consequence of white people.”

Mngxitama continued in the same vein, eventually bringing up the recent announcement by minority lobby group AfriForum that they had hired advocate Barry Roux to help them appeal the murder conviction of two Coligny, North West men found guilty of killing a teenager for stealing sunflower seeds.

“Let’s take the example of [Coligny],” he said.

“It was not an accident. Two grown white farmers murdered a black child, they’ve been found guilty, but here is the shocking thing. AfriForum has decided to take money to buy the best lawyers it can get to let these white murderers not serve their prison term.

“These white men must go to jail but the white community is united behind these murderers, so they don’t go to jail.”

He said in this context he and his party couldn’t “pretend there is no division in South Africa”.

READ MORE: Barry Roux to lead Coligny murder appeal, says AfriForum

The testimony of the sole witness in the Coligny murder trial has been questioned.

Rapport revealed it had heard a recording in which Bonakele Pakisi said he hadn’t been telling the truth when he testified that farmworkers Pieter Doorewaard, 27, and Phillip Schutte, 34, had murdered 16-year-old Matlhomola Moshoeu in April 2017.

The next day, however, Pakisi told the Sowetan he was actually forced to change his testimony and that the recording was allegedly gained through intimidation by being shown a firearm and being forced to read an already prepared statement.

The issue has divided South Africans along mostly racial lines, with some assuming the pair’s guilt, others their innocence, seemingly based on their being the same colour as either the victim or perpetrators.

The Citizen reported in January that, as a result of the case, racial tensions in the North West town were at an all-time high.

“The situation is calm but volatile, it depends on the outcome of this case,” community leader Stan Mnyakama told the court.

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