Tuesday’s EFF press conference was supposed to be an update from the party’s coalition talks but, naturally, Julius Malema took the opportunity to stir further division and pull on emotional strings.
EFF wants ‘Die Stem’ removed from national anthem
Enjoying the position of kingmaker in politics, the Red Berets have been in favourable positions in coalition talks with the likes of the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), as well as ActionSA and the ANC in key municipalities in Gauteng.
This time around, Malema’s party has a list of prerequisites that must be met before coalition talks are taken to the negotiation table.
During his presser, Malema revealed that, even the ruling party is welcome to extend an olive branch in hopes of forming an alliance with the EFF. However, a few commitments must be made, including the launch of a state bank and — wait for it — a section of the national anthem to be replaced.
This, of course, is ‘Die Stem’, the part of South Africa’s multilingual national anthem sang in Afrikaans.
“We’re not saying remove Afrikaans, we’re saying remove ‘Die Stem’. We can get people to compose an Afrikaans version, a nice, new Afrikaans melody,” Malema proposed.
These assertions come more than two years after the EFF called for the removal of ‘Die Stem’ to follow the apartheid flag which, in 2019, was declared a symbol of hate speech.
“It must be a common cause that the apartheid national anthem must follow after its flag. The apartheid flag and its anthem belong to the same species. They are the two sides of one coin. When white supremacists display the flag, they salute it by singing Die Stem because they belong in the same anti-black racism performance acts,” the EFF noted at the time.
While it’s unlikely that, in any case, any coalition government will be formed between the EFF and ANC, the party did warn that the section of the national anthem must be removed within 12 months.