EFF spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said Die Stem is a song for racists, oppressors and murderers
Image: Drum.
In its Heritage Day statement yesterday, the Economic Freedom Fighters said celebrating Heritage Day without the rightful return of land to those who were dispossessed and the removal of all symbols of colonialism and apartheid was inappropriate.
Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the EFF national spokesman, said the celebration of Heritage Day without resolution of the land question is condemned by the EFF. He also said South Africa’s cultural heritage must not be arrayed to put people into sleep as they continue to live like visitors in the land of their birth.
Ndlozi went on to say, “We sing on the land, we paint on the land, we dance on the land and we speak on the land, a people without land is a people without a future. Land is the foundation of human dignity without which all culture and art spirit hang in perpetual shame. We cannot be proud without land.” He pointed out that the Economic Freedom Fighters was recapitulating its call for land requisition without compensation. He continued to say, “Only the expropriation of land without compensation for equal redistribution will give our people dignity and guarantee their freedom into the future, in particular cultural and artistic freedoms.”
Ndlozi called Die Stem a song of racists and murderers and he called for it to be dropped from the national anthem and for all place names evoking white rule to be changed. He said Die Stem is a heritage of oppression therefore Nkosi Sikelela must be sang in the same way as South Africans did when they were praying for a land free from oppression during the colonial and apartheid period. He added that among those places which EFF wished to see renamed was the Kruger National Park.
He also said the EFF would continue to push for the removal of all symbols of the country’s colonial and apartheid past, specifically at Parliament, the statue of Louis Botha and Queen Victoria.
Furthermore, Ndlozi said there must be no valuation of racists who presided over the oppression and mass murder of the black majority. He added that land must be redistributed and all colonial and apartheid symbols must fall if South African heritage is to be given any dignity.
