IF WHITE farmers want to flee for a “racist country” like Australia they should leave the keys to their houses and tractors behind, the head of South Africa’s radical Marxist opposition party says.
But Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema, who recently declared his party was “cutting the throat of whiteness”, denied white farmers were being killed. “We don’t know violence, we know negotiations,” Malema told a packed Human Rights Day rally in Mpumalanga Stadium on Wednesday.
“And we are very robust in our engagement sometimes. A racist country like Australia says: ‘The white farmers are being killed in South Africa.’ We are not killing them. Now Australia says: ‘Malema, EFF want to kill white farmers, they must come to Australia.’
“If they want to go, they must go. They must leave the keys to their tractors because we want to work the land, they must leave the keys to their houses because we want to stay in those houses. They must leave everything they did not come here with in South Africa and go to Australia.”
His comments came as Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton stared down criticism from “crazy lefties” as he pushed on with plans to bring white South African farmers to Australia.
“They don’t realise how completely dead they are to me,” Mr Dutton told Sydney radio station 2GB on Thursday.
Malema, who was convicted of hate speech in 2011 for singing the apartheid-era revolutionary song Shoot the Boer, Kill the Farmer and in 2016 told supporters he was “not calling for the slaughter of white people‚ at least for now”, said farmers should “leave quietly”.
“We’re too busy,” he said. “Don’t make noise, because you will irritate us. Go to Australia. It is only racists who went to Australia when Mandela got out of prison. It is only racists who went to Australia when 1994 came. It is the racists again who are going back to Australia.”
But he said they would be “poor in Australia”. “They are rich here because they are exploiting black people. There is no black person to be exploited in Australia, they are going to be poor.
“They will come back here with their tail between their legs. We will hire them because we will be the owners of their farms when they come back to South Africa. As to what we are going to do with the land, it’s our business, it’s none of your business.
“We want Africa back. Africa belongs to our people.
‘PEOPLE ARE BEING SAVAGELY ATTACKED’
Mr Dutton outraged South Africa’s government earlier this month when he floated the idea of fast-tracked humanitarian visas for white South African farmers, saying they faced “horrific circumstances” and needed help from a “civilised country”.
“The South African government is offended by the statements which have been attributed to the Australian Home Affairs Minister and a full retraction is expected,” South Africa’s foreign ministry said in a statement at the time.
“That threat does not exist. There is no reason for any government in the world to suspect that a section of South Africans is under danger from their own democratically elected government.”
On Thursday, Mr Dutton said he was unperturbed by “mean cartoons” and negative media coverage. “We just get on with making decisions that we need to,” he told 2GB.