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ZIWAPHI • VOL 4 NO 7 • 9 - 22 APRIL 2010

NELSPRUIT

The ANC Youth League in Mpumalanga has asked opposition parties to refrain from using Eugene Terre Blanche’s murder to “score political points”.

ANCYL provincial secretary Hamzar Ngwenya said opposition parties were “opportunists who will blame the ANC for the murder of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader”.

“They use the death of Mr. Terre Blanche to score political points. They don’t think of the family in this difficult time because they make uncalculated statements about his death. They want the family and the police to lose focus of the real matter,” said Ngwenya on Tuesday.

“It is also not right to link ANCYL president Julius Malema to this killing. He is not a murderer but a leader ... All those that are saying our president should be associated with this killing must wake up from their dreamland. There is no way we would succumb to the political failures of the opposition parties by allowing them to make our president their subject matter ...” Ngwenya said.

In a statement released on Tuesday, DA leader Helen Zille said Malema’s “kill the boer” song was inciting people to murder and created a climate in which murder was legitimised and romanticised.

“Political leaders must acknowledge the legitimacy of the feelings being expressed in response to the murder of Mr. Terre Blanche. Merely pointing out, as the ANC has done, that there is no direct evidence linking Malema’s hate speech to Terre Blanche’s murder is unhelpful, to say the least, at a time like this,”said Zille.

She said it was time for Jacob Zuma to act like a president and tell “his youth league and its leader that we cannot allow our history of division to destroy our chances of building a shared future”.

“If President Zuma cannot take a stand against Malema, the rest of South Africa must,” she added.

Afriforum has also linked Terre Blanche’s death to Malema’s repeated singing of the song during public appearances.

“While we welcome President Zuma’s condemnation of the killing of Mr. Terre Blanche, he should also condemn the continuing singing of the song “shoot the boer”. We will also approach the United Nations to start monitoring the situation in this country,” said Afriforum chairperson Flip Buys.