'Kill the Boer' song just a 'liberation chant' — not a call for violence, according to South African president

The South African president rejected President Donald Trump's assertion that the South African communist leader who leads chants about killing white farmers should be arrested.

President Cyril Ramaphosa met with President Trump last week in the White House, where he firmly denied the existence of a genocide or even targeted killings of white South African farmers known as the Boers.

'It's not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to go and be killed.'

During their meeting, Trump suggested to Ramaphosa that the South African government should arrest Julius Malema, a political leader who has led chants of "shoot the Boer" and "shoot to kill" to a stadium full of supporters.

Upon returning to South Africa, Ramaphosa spoke to reporters about the idea of arrests and asserted that his country is a sovereign nation with its own laws and processes. He also excused the racist chants as freedom of expression.

"We take into account what the constitutional court also decided when it said that, you know, that slogan, 'kill the Boer, kill the farmer,' is a liberation chant and slogan."

"It's not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to go and be killed," the president claimed. "And that is what our court decided. ... We follow the dictates of our constitution because we are a constitutional state, and we are a country where freedom of expression is in the bedrock of our constitutional arrangement."

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Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF) President Julius Malema sings, 'Kill the Boer, kill the farmer,' during a campaign on May 25, 2025. Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images

Ramaphosa's remarks did not tell the whole story, though. Malema, the leader of the black nationalist communist party Economic Freedom Fighters, was actually convicted of hate speech in 2011 for singing the very same songs.

However, in 2022, South Africa's Equality Court superseded the prior conviction and determined the hate speech charges to be unconstitutional. According to Ground Up, the judge declared "society has a duty to allow and be tolerant of both popular and unpopular views of its members."

At the same time, two white South Africans have been convicted of hate speech since Ramaphosa took office.

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In 2018, a woman named Vicky Momberg was sentenced to three years in prison, with one year suspended, for using a derogatory word against a black policeman 48 times.

According to the BBC, Momberg allegedly had her racist rant caught on video and shared to social media. On the video, she used the term "kaffir," which is seen as a slur against black South Africans. The term originates from a word for non-Muslims in Africa who were often slaves.

In 2022, Belinda Magor was arrested after she said black women should have their uteruses cut in a WhatsApp messaging group. She also wrote, "What I say is: ban the black man. They rape, they steal, they kill, worse than any pit bull could, and they get away with it."

Magor was fined and told to issue a "written apology to black South Africans for her hate speech and not repeat the racist utterance on social media and public platforms."

South Africa's human rights commission described the woman as a "defender of racial discrimination."

Neither of these convictions were overturned on freedom of speech grounds.

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